In a matter of two weeks and two discouraging losses, the Terrapin football team has put its postseason hopes in doubt and left coach Ralph Friedgen questioning whether he is reaching his players.

Sound familiar?

It should. The calendar may have switched to 2005, but the Terps’ season thus far has been a continuation of the 2004 campaign everybody wanted to forget.

With a 31-19 defeat at home Saturday to West Virginia, the Terps fell to 1-2 with few easy plays remaining. Aside from a game this week at Wake Forest, an Oct. 8 bout at Temple and a Nov. 12 contest at North Carolina, the Terps play three ranked foes (Virginia, Virginia Tech and Florida State) and two others receiving votes in the most recent AP poll (Boston College and N.C. State). Of those remaining games, the Terps must win five to become bowl-eligible.

Several players claimed ardently Saturday this team is improved from its 2004 version and a better fate awaits them. But they haven’t done much to convince anybody outside of the locker room.

“No, no, no, no,” cornerback Josh Wilson said of any comparisons to last season. “We’ve got a quality team here. We have an offense that can go down the field and produce for us. I love that. … Once we bring back that mental state that you need to be winners, we can bring back that Gator Bowl feeling.”

This team is different than that of last season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean better.

One positive has been the play of quarterback Sam Hollenbach, who is building credibility each week. It seems, more so than last season, the Terps know what they’re getting from the quarterback each week.

Most everything else is a mystery.

It’s not the 1-2 record that makes bowl consideration seem a diminished probability; it’s all the other numbers the Terps have put forth.

After piling up 210 rushing yards in the season-opening win over Navy, the ground game has been nonexistent against stouter defenses. The Terps followed a 56-yard effort against Clemson with 50 rushing yards against West Virginia.

An offense that used to bewilder opponents – so much so that Sports Illustrated devoted a two-page spread in its 2003 college football preview to declare Friedgen an “X’s and O’s Wiz” – has become predictable. Even the West Virginia band, seated almost out of view Saturday, could see the Terps were trying to establish the run at all costs.

Of their first nine possessions, six ended without a first down. Only after opening up the passing game in the fourth quarter did the Terps begin to mount a comeback.

More troubling, though, the defense – a major factor in the Terps’ quick assent to perennial bowl participants in Friedgen’s first three years – has become a liability.

The Mountaineers rumbled for 301 rushing yards. They scored 24 fourth-quarter points. A week earlier, Clemson clawed its way to a win with 14 fourth-quarter points.

A couple of the veteran players noted the slow starts of the 2002 and 2003 seasons that ended in prestigious bowl victories. Trouble is, there’s little about this team comparable to the squads that made three consecutive bowl appearances. That run might as well be referred to as the glory days now because its seems so very distant.

That said, more than two-thirds of the season remains, and I think it is still premature to start wondering what 2006 holds. Not to be the last one to leap from a sinking ship, but I’ll give the Terps a few more games before writing them off completely. Friedgen has beaten the odds before with this program.

He’s riding a long shot again, but they’re only through the season’s first turn.

Contact reporter Ryan Young at youngdbk@gmail.com.