It’s homecoming week for the Terps as Maryland welcomes Indiana on Saturday inside Maryland Stadium. Saturday also marks the celebration of the 2001 Maryland team that won the ACC Championship en route to an Orange Bowl bid, giving Maryland head coach Mike Locksley an opportunity to reflect.
“As I told our team yesterday, you know, it's kind of ironic that this ‘01 team is being honored because I was part of the build of that from ‘97 to 2000 and if you recall that era, you know, the first couple of years were two or three-win teams,” Locksley said on Tuesday. “And at one point we’re 5-2, and we lost every game from there and one thing that stood out to me when that coaching search took place for a guy that I call a great mentor, Coach Friedgen. I remember EJ Henderson and or Denard Wilson and Aaron Thompson standing up because I was part of the transition team having been kept on and I remember them saying Coach, how are you going to help us win? And one of the first things he said and it's kind of become a mantra of mine that coach Friedgen said to the team was, you know I’m not gonna teach you how to win, I'm gonna teach you how not to lose, how not to beat yourself. And from that day on, I've kind of carried that as my mantra.” Maryland has won 63% of its homecoming games all-time, but Locksley knows this weekend provides more than just a game. “Football creates a brotherhood that transcends through generations and we have an opportunity for some of our former players to come back and some of our former students here to come back and homecoming is for them,” Locksley added. “For us, we’re the show and it's our job to, as I always say, go out, put a product on the field that these people coming back here to campus can be proud of and I expect us to do that.”
Maryland will look for their fifth homecoming game win in six tries as both teams fight through the meat of their conference slate. Just as Maryland is adjusting to injuries on both sides of the ball, Indiana is fighting through their own injuries after backup quarterback Jack Tuttle left Saturday’s game with a foot injury, joining Michael Penix as the second Hoosiers’ quarterback to go down this season. Maryland head coach Mike Locksley added he expects to see freshman Donaven McCulley as the Hoosiers’ starting quarterback this weekend but the Terps know the path to victory starts with minimizing the self-inflicted wounds.
“It really doesn't matter who it is,” Locksley said. “We need to be prepared that what we’ve put on tape, and we say this often that, you know, in baseball, if you can't hit the curveball, guess what you won't see, you will see the curveball.” That starts with the run defense after Maryland allowed a pair of Gopher freshmen to rush for over 100-yards before the unit finished with 326 yards on the ground in an 18-point win. Linebacker Branden Jennings rotated into the game to bolster Maryland’s interior linebacker depth as Maryland attempted to stifle the Gophers’ offensive line, but found no success as the Terps’ scheme is again called into question.
“We’re a 3-4 team so the nose guard and you know, Ami [Finau], Mo [Nasili-Kite], Greg Rose, Sam [Okuayinonu], it wasn't the interior part of our defense that was getting chewed up. It was our edges and we didn't do a great job and again, that's not on the players, it’s on us as coaches.” Locksley noted the tape showed that Maryland “lost the C gap, D gap area quite a bit in that game and to me, that was really, really disappointing because we had two weeks to kind of come up with a plan.”
Maryland now turns the page as Saturday features the two worst scoring defenses in the Big Ten. Even with a freshman quarterback potentially preparing for his first career start, Locksley is mindful that the Terps’ film against the Gophers exposes the Terps’ defense to a similar attacking scheme. “I would expect that with their quarterbacks being banged up their whole lineup to say ‘well, let's look and see what Minnesota did,’ so we better get the things that we haven't been able to correct corrected this week and expect them to come in and try to run the ball down our throat.” Coached by former Chiefs’ running backs coach Deland McCullough, the Hoosiers will feature former USC transfer and Doak Walker Award candidate Stephen Carr as he’s already notched the 100-yard mark twice this season. Indiana will look to create a balanced offensive attack with Ty Fryfogle returning along the perimeter, but the Hoosiers enter Saturday’s contest with the 99th-best passing offense in the country.
Maryland remains a work in progress offensively as they’re adjusting to the season-ending loss of receivers Dontay Demus and Jeshaun Jones, but fans saw former Nebraska receiver Marcus Fleming emerge on Saturday as a viable second option in the passing game. “Really proud of the way Marcus has come along and it's, you know, been a process with him as a transfer, a young player, new system, new core values for how we do business. But the best thing about it is that I saw the transition over the last two to three weeks as we started having some of these injuries that I knew he would be prepared to step in and maybe take on some of the responsibility of creating some big plays for us.”
Locksley knows step one to a victory over Indiana starts with holding onto the football. “We got to be able to protect the football, and then find a way to generate some explosive plays because they do some good stuff on defense, very multiple. They come from all over the place. The scheme on defense is one of those schemes that you better have all of your rules in place to make sure you keep your quarterback protected. You know, I think back having watched, unfortunately having to watch that Indiana game from last year, our quarterback didn't play well in that game went through some interceptions that again, as I look back on the tape, that's on me as the head coach and us as coaches and making sure we do things that we can get executed. We're doing everything we can is wait to put a great plan together and it's gonna be about the Terps beating Indiana and us not beating ourselves.”
With Maryland legends like EJ Henderson and Bruce Perry expected along the sidelines, Locksley hopes his team mirrors the energy that the 2001 Maryland Terps carried.
“I just hope this team, a lot like the ’01 team, is sick and tired of being sick and tired and put our best foot forward this weekend, get back on winning track.”
Kickoff is set for 12 PM EST.
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