Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

Maryland wins a roller coaster match up to finish the season at 8-5.  Right before the game Patrick Stevens reported on his post that 7 players would not be starting the game because of curfew violations.  Da’rell Scott was one of them.  That may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise, but more on that later.  I won’t do a total play by play recap but the Terps started the scoring with a 59 yard TD pass from Chris Turner to Adrian Cannon.  Then the first dip in the roller coaster was Obi’s missed XP.  Nevada answered with a short TD pass, after a long gain to get inside the 5.  On the ensuing kickoff Torey Smith returned the kickoff 99 yards for the TD.  Xp good this time.  Then another major drop in our little ride, was Egekeze’s “kick off”  It looked like an onsides attempt, but the replay would show he kicked the ball as it was falling off the tee.  Nevada returns it to the 20, but Kenny Tate intercepted a pass in the endzone.  Up and down, up and down.  Morgan Green would add his season highlight next with a 56 yard TD of his own.  Then just before the half Ronnie Tyler caught a TD, and MD converted a two point conversion to give them a 28-14 lead.  It was really amazing they had three TD’s over 50 yards and not a single one was from Heyward-Bey or Da’Rell Scott. 

I was feeling really confident, They were talking about Kaepernick being hurt, and possibly out for the second half.  Things were looking very good.  Before you know it, MD’s offense disappeared, and the previously injured Kaepernick got hot and was able to tie the game at 28.  Now back to where I said having Da’Rell Scott missing curfew may have been a blessing in disguise.  He came in and absolutely torched Nevada’s defense.  Two TD’s (one 49 yards) wound up being enough for the Terps to hang on late.  Scott made Nevada’s defense look like they were stuck in mud.  He broke tackles, beat them to the corner, and beat them just about any way he wanted.  He would go on to set a MD bowl record with 174 yards on only 14 carries, all in the second half.  It was video game like.  There are a couple of other performances that stick out in my mind for a running back.  Bruce Perry had over 200 against Wake in 2001.  Lamont Jordan’s 305 yard game in Vanderlinden’s swan song against UVA.  It was pure domination. 

Overall, a lot of players made plays.  Heyward-Bey had 4 catches for 49, Morgan Green rushed for 72, Ronnie Tyler had 4 catches.  The list goes on and on.  In fact the Terps got 456 yards of total offense. 

Check back later for more breakdown of the game.  That was just my quick look at the stats, and what happened.  When I will get a chance I will try to figure out what it all means for the team going forward.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Maryland Terps Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.