University of Maryland Wins Their Season Opener Against West Virginia
The Terps start slow but finish strong with their first win of the season.
For the 16th consecutive time, the Maryland Terrapins men’s football team has won their home opener. This time it was against the West Virginia Mountaineers, 30-24.
Quarterback Taulia Tagovalia threw for 332 yards on 26-36 completions and three touchdowns. Both wide receivers Dontay Demus Jr. and Rakim Jarrett had six catches and more than 100 yards receiving and a touchdown apiece. Tayon Fleet-Davis rushed for a career-high 123 yards. The defense was strong forcing four turnovers and four sacks.
Head coach Michael Locksley said this:
“Hard-fought game. That was a hard-fought game. We talked to our team on Thursday and Friday, I actually showed them a video of the Arturo Gatti vs Mickey Ward fight, that ninth round, to show them that that’s exactly what I thought this game would end up being. Sure enough, it ended up being one of those four-quarter games right until the end. We give a lot of credit to West Virginia for the job they did and the way they competed.
Really proud of our team. They faced adversity throughout the game. They got down, things happened and they gave up some big plays on special teams. The thing that really jumped out to me that was created by how we worked and things that were done in the offseason and our guys kind of bonded together and they kept fighting. To me, that’s the important thing. The discipline issue with the penalties, we had some issues. We’re going to keep coaching them through it.
We gave up four points when we had a stop in the red zone on third down but we jumped offsides. Those are all correctable. Fortunately for us, we corrected it with a win. I’ve got to give the kids credit. They hung in there and believed. They wanted it more and I’m really proud of the job they did today. We’ll celebrate it for 24 hours, get back in here tomorrow as a coaching staff and on Monday we’ll set our preparation and make some corrections and get ready for Howard.”
The Terps’ next game is another homestand. They welcome the Howard Bison to Maryland Stadium next Saturday at 7:30 p.m. That game will air on Big Ten Network and the Maryland Sports Radio Network. Their last meeting in 2019 ended in whooping as Maryland trounced Howard by a score of 79-0.
