A lot of the buzz from South Carolina’s coaching search has been centered around Oklahoma assistant head coach Shane Beamer, who reportedly fared well during his interview with the Gamecocks’ brass on Friday. However, it’s not a done deal that Beamer will be the next head coach at South Carolina.

According to Clint Brewster of 247Sports.com, the Gamecocks’ other top candidate in their search is West Virginia head coach Neal Brown, who is nearing the end of his second season leading the Mountaineers. West Virginia is 5-3 so far this year, going 4-3 in Big 12 play. Justin Rowland of Rivals.com confirmed that South Carolina is “very interested” in Brown and would like to schedule an interview with him.

Brown owns a 10-10 record with the Mountaineers, after he went 35-16 as the head coach at Troy from 2015-18 in his first stint as a college head coach.

Although Brown has no previous ties to South Carolina, he has experience in the SEC. He played at Kentucky from 1998-2000 (before transferring to UMass to finish his career from 2001-02), and he was the Wildcats’ offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach from 2013-14. He left Kentucky to take the head-coaching job at Troy.

The South Carolina job became open when the school fired Will Muschamp on Nov. 15. Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo has been serving as the Gamecocks’ interim head coach since then, losing to Missouri and Georgia the past two weeks.