The Terrapins have so many reasons for wanting to completely forget what happened last November in Blacksburg, Va. One of the most lopsided defeats in program history, it ensured the team would miss the postseason for the first time in Ralph Friedgen’s tenure.

But there is one player who can’t help but remember that game.

If not for the 55-6 shellacking at the hands of Virginia Tech, Sam Hollenbach probably wouldn’t be here today. If not for the unlikeliest of scenarios, the junior quarterback admits he most likely would have transferred at the end of last season.

“It was kind of bittersweet for me personally,” he said of his primetime debut.

The Hokies and Terps meet again Thursday night at Byrd Stadium. A lot has changed in 11 months. Hollenbach has changed – from buried down the depth chart to among the ACC passing leaders and one of the most obvious reasons the Terps sit 4-2.

Terp offensive coordinator Charlie Taaffe has been a football coach for more than 30 years. He said he’s never seen a year-to-year transformation like Hollenbach’s.

“With other guys I’ve had, I don’t remember that scenario,” Taaffe said, after pausing to put it in perspective. “To make the leap that he’s made is just tremendous. It’s been good for him, obviously, and it’s been very good for us.”

It bears asking, where would the Terps be if not for Hollenbach’s emergence? A better question, though, is how did a guy who had fallen so far rise so high in such a short period of time?

Anybody who watched the 6-foot-5 Hollenbach tumble from a close race with Joel Statham for the starting job all the way to fourth-string 14 months ago had to wonder if the quarterback wasn’t better off transferring. His release was slow, his accuracy not quite there. His future in the program was, at best, doubtful.

Hollenbach realized this. He entered last season knowing it may well have been his last in College Park. His father, a former collegiate quarterback at Illinois, broached the subject of transferring. They decided to let the season play out before making a decision. As 2004 wound down, there seemed little reason to stick around – until that Thursday night.

Statham threw three first-half interceptions against the Hokies and took a seat on the bench. Backup Jordan Steffy was knocked out of the game by a punishing hit. Ryan Mitch, ahead of Hollenbach to start the season, had previously been demoted and was not with the team. Suddenly, it was Hollenbach’s time.

“I was really happy with how everything else was here at school, but if I didn’t get in there, I don’t know if I’d be here right now,” he said.

Crazy how things work sometimes, huh?

But his rise is not merely the outcome of opportunity. There was a reason Hollenbach was the last option in the passing game. He had flaws.

When he dropped back to pass, his arm wrapped behind his head, slowing his release, and his legs were unbalanced when he threw, affecting the precision of his passes, Taaffe said. On top of that, when he faced a stiff pass rush, he panicked.

“He would lose it. He’d just stand there. He wouldn’t know where to go with it,” Taaffe said.

But all that was correctable, the coaching staff believed. They worked on his throwing motion by encouraging him to bring his elbow out away from his body more. During the offseason, when the football coaches were prohibited by NCAA rules from working with their players, Hollenbach was sent to the baseball team. Former Terp pitching coach Ben Bachmann worked on balancing the quarterback’s legs as he passed.

And experience weeded out the panic.

“Now he just stands in there and it doesn’t fluster him,” Taaffe said. “There’s no magic formula. He’s done the work.”

The results are distinct. Through more than half of the season, Hollenbach is second in the league in passing yards per game (252.2), second in pass efficiency and tops in total offense per game (264.3 yards).

“He’s finding that he can be a very good quarterback on this level,” Taaffe said. “A year ago this time, there was probably some doubt or some question.”

After the Terps’ win at Temple, Friedgen marveled at the transformation.

“In the preseason scrimmage last year, the last scrimmage before we started the season and really where we determined the depth chart, he had four or five guys wide open and missed every one of them. He has come so far from then, it amazes me,” he said.

An afterthought a year ago, Hollenbach now has the team riding a three-game winning streak and thinking big entering what may well be the toughest two-game stretch the program has faced in Friedgen’s now five-year tenure. All the quarterback needed was a chance, he said. Now he’s got a chance to steer the Terps back to the postseason.

An upset of No. 3-ranked Virginia Tech would be a big statement for the Terps and their quarterback, but Hollenbach has already made his statement – regardless of outcome Thursday or the following week against No. 11 Florida State.

He has played as great a role in the Terps’ offensive resurgence as any, and is a big reason why a far better fate should be expected against the Hokies this time – if not in result, than at least in competitiveness.

Thinking back to that fateful Thursday night last November, Hollenbach remembers it as the moment when he realized he could succeed with the Terps.

“It [showed me] I could actually do it on the field because I never really knew,” he said.

Now everybody else knows, too.

Contact reporter Ryan Young at youngdbk@gmail.com.