Photo by Emma Lantos/ The Daily Californian for The Diamondback
BERKELEY, Calif. – The Terrapin football team knows what it did here.
After coach Ralph Friedgen and a few Terp veterans ambled into a decrepit tunnel in the bowels of California Memorial Stadium on Saturday night, the mainstays spoke calmly and rationally to the assembled reporters about all the things they did wrong in their 52-13 loss to No. 12 Cal, and where they have to go from here.
There was no need for them to harp on all the grisly details.
The Terps lost by 39 points on national television to a Golden Bears team that looked light years ahead of them in every facet of the game.
They suffered the most lopsided season-opening loss since the very first game in program history in 1892, and the second most lopsided loss in any game since Friedgen took over the program in 2001.
But they are leaving it here on the West Coast.
“I’m sure that I’m going to come to class … and feel the heat,” quarterback Chris Turner said. “But that’s part of being a team: just sticking together. The way we’re approaching this is, ‘it’s a very long season.’ It’s not an ACC game, so it’s a learning experience. Yeah, we got our asses kicked, but that happens from time to time.”
Things started badly for the Terps and eventually spiraled out of control.
On the first play of Cal’s second offensive possession, Heisman Trophy candidate Jahvid Best scored on a 73-yard touchdown run during which he simply outran the entire Terp defense to give the Bears a quick 7-0 lead.
That one play gave Best 48 more yards than he had in all of last year’s 35-27 Terp win over Cal in College Park. He finished with 137 yards on just 10 carries after he sat out most of the second half of the blowout.
Torrey Smith fumbled during the ensuing kickoff return, and Best found the end zone again two plays later on a 2-yard run. All of a sudden the Golden Bears led 14-0 less than six minutes into the game and had the Terps on their heels.
“Guys were kind of getting on each other a little bit, because that was not how we wanted to start,” cornerback Nolan Carroll said.
From there, the foggy evening in front of a raucous crowd in a classic stadium turned into a nightmare scenario. The question marks that hung over the Terps the entire offseason were answered in the worst way — at least for one night.
New defensive coordinator Don Brown acknowledged before the season his aggressive defensive scheme was susceptible to allowing a few big plays but could also create big plays.
The Terps allowed 52 points and 542 yards of total offense without forcing any turnovers and picking up just two sacks.
In addition to Best’s big night, quarterback Kevin Riley finished 17-for-26 for 298 yards and four touchdown passes, two of which went for 39 and 42 yards, respectively. Riley often found receivers who had gotten more than a step past the Terps’ secondary.
The score was 31-6 before halftime, and when the Bears stretched it to 45-6 with a 42-yard pass to wide receiver Marvin Jones with 9:53 left in the third quarter, some of the Terp fans seated in a corner of the stadium headed for the exits.
“It’s tough because I really thought as a team we were ready,” Carroll said. “It looked like in practice we were mentally sharp. In our walk-through we were mentally sharp. We knew our assignments. Then we came out here and it kind of just went downhill a little bit.”
On the other side of the ball, the Terps were supposed to have talent at the skill positions, but the inexperienced offensive line was an unknown.
The Golden Bears sacked Turner six times, they never let him get into a rhythm, and Terp offensive linemen got called for five penalties, including an ineligible man downfield penalty that negated a four-yard touchdown catch by Matt Furstenburg. That score could have kept the Terps in the game for a little longer in the second quarter.
Plus, left tackle Bruce Campbell had to leave the game with a turf toe injury that plagued him for the most of the night.
“It’s always surprising. You think you’re going to come out and do well,” center Phil Costa said. “It was surprising some of the things we didn’t do well tonight.”
The positives were very few and far between, but there were a couple the Terps could potentially build on when they arrive back East.
A team source announced Nick Ferrara would be the Terps’ starting placekicker less than an hour before kickoff, and the true freshman knocked through both his field goals attempts.
Running back Da’Rel Scott also had a decent night, finishing with 90 yards on 13 carries and a 39-yard touchdown run that served as the Terps’ lone highlight of the night.
That was pretty much it.
The Terps’ shortcomings Saturday night were glaring, they were plentiful, and they were costly, but the Terps say they are still going to show up at practice today and see what they can accomplish against the rest of their schedule.
They say they can’t let one game define their season, no matter how bad it turned out to be.
“I still think this team is going to develop into a good football team,” Friedgen said. “It will be interesting to see how we react.”
schimmel@umdbk.com
For more coverage, check out Terrapin Trail’s wrap-up podcast of the California game by clicking here.
