How big is one win?
In the locker room following a come-from-behind win over Virginia, Maryland’s football players yelled and beat the walls and sang the school fight song at the top of their lungs. It was a raucous scene.
“I’m going to tell you – in the locker room it was euphoric,” Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen said after his team rallied from a 20-0 halftime deficit to pull out a 28-26 win. “I mean, I was going nuts, coaches were going nuts, kids were going nuts. It was such a release.”
It’s tough to say which team had the biggest win Saturday – Maryland or Wake Forest, which beat North Carolina State 25-23. In many ways, the wins were very similar from an emotional standpoint.
Coming into October, the teams were a combined 8-1. Wake was a perfect 5-0, but no one was giving them credit after a fairly light schedule – and a one-point win over Duke – to open the season. Maryland had one real test early on, and in that game West Virginia hammered them. The Terps also squeaked by a bad Florida International team 14-10.
Then, in their first October games of the season, both teams could have silenced the critics. And almost did.
Instead, Wake Forest blew a 17-3 fourth-quarter lead to lose to Clemson, while Maryland gave up 13 fourth-quarter points to Georgia Tech and failed to score from Tech’s 7-yard line in the game’s final minute to lose 27-23.
So both Friedgen and Wake Forest’s Jim Grobe were happy to see their teams respond with a win on Saturday.
“To bounce back after a loss like we had last week, a lot of teams would have crumbled and come in here and not played,” Grobe said. “I’m just really proud of the way our kids prepared this week and came in here and played.”
Now the question being asked is if wins like the ones Maryland and Wake had on Saturday can carry over to the remainder of the season. Friedgen thinks it can.
“It can help. It really can,” the Maryland coach said. “It’s just how do the kids take it. Do they gain confidence from it? That’s what I’m hoping. I think that’s one of the things that’s been really lacking with this team. Like I’ve explained to a lot of our writers, it’s a big difference between thinking you can do it and knowing you can do it. I think it’s like that in every profession. When you’re confident you can do the job you feel pretty good about yourself, but until you do it you’ll always think you can do it. There’s a difference.”
Now both Maryland and Wake Forest know they can do it.
-Patrick Hite