Maryland Series
September 16, 2004 03:15 PM | General
September 16, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The last three games withstanding, West Virginia’s long standing football series with Maryland has been both competitive and interesting. Including Maryland’s most recent four-game winning streak, the Terps now own a 21-19-2 advantage in a series that first began in 1919, a West Virginia 27-0 victory.
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| WVU quarterback Darren Studstill three
three touchdowns passes in a span of 10 minutes to help the Mountaineers
come from 19 points behind. WVU Sports Communications photo |
The two played intermittently through the 1940s, with the Mountaineers claiming a victory in 1943 and the two teams battling to ties in 1944 and 1945.
Spice was added to the series in 1947 when North Carolina graduate Jim Tatum took over the Terrapin program and led Maryland to a 27-0 stunner over West Virginia in College Park. That set up the first really significant game of the series when the two teams met to conclude the 1948 season in Morgantown following Thanksgiving recess.
The Terps, coming off a Gator Bowl appearance a season ago when they tied Georgia 20-20, limped into West Virginia with a 6-3 record after consecutive losses to North Carolina and Vanderbilt.
The Mountaineers, meanwhile, built up a fine 7-3 record that included a homecoming victory over South Carolina. West Virginia observers believed another win over a quality opponent like Maryland might be enough to get WVU into a bowl game.
The two teams played a hard-fought contest that was determined late on a Gene Simmons 22-yard drop-kick field goal to give West Virginia a 16-14 victory. Jim Devonshire ran for 80 yards and scored both touchdowns for the Mountaineers in one of the great hidden victories of that period.
“I was working for the Daily Athenaeum at the time and I can remember Jim Tatum complaining that football was a big-man’s game and that he couldn’t believe that a little kicker from Elkins could decide the outcome of the game,” recalled longtime sportswriter Mickey Furfari.
West Virginia held a distinct 202-120 advantage on the ground despite having one of the nation’s top passers in quarterback Jim Walthall. West Virginia’s performance against Maryland helped it earn a bid to play Texas Western in the 1948 Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.
It was also the Mountaineers’ last victory against the Terps for 21 years.
Tatum’s next year in 1949 saw Maryland roll to a 9-1 record that included a 47-7 shellacking of West Virginia in College Park. In 1950, new WVU coach Art “Pappy” Lewis found the going tough against Tatum’s Terps, dropping a 41-0 verdict in Morgantown.
One of West Virginia’s bleakest performances in the series came in 1951 during a season in which Maryland rolled through the Southern Conference and defeated No. 1-ranked Tennessee 28-13 in the Sugar Bowl.
West Virginia lost at Maryland 54-7 in a game that the Mountaineers attempted a school-record 57 passes. The 57 passes tried by West Virginia quarterback Gerry Fisher were 15 more than he attempted the entire season.
Maryland’s run defense was that good.
Nineteen fifty two saw a shakeup in the series when Maryland pulled out of the Southern Conference to merge with the Carolina schools and Virginia to form the Atlantic Coast Conference.
It was nine years until the two border rivals resumed their series in 1959-60 (two Maryland victories), and a lone meeting in 1966 when Lou Saban’s Terrapins outdistanced Jim Carlen’s first WVU team, 28-9 in College Park was it until former WVU graduate Roy Lester took over the Terrapin job in 1969 after a highly successful tenure at Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md.
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| Fullback Jim Braxton ran for two TDs,
kicked a field goal and made all four extra points in a 31-7 win in 1969. WVU Sports Communications photo |
The Terps won just two of 17 games under Bob Ward in 1967-68 and Lester wasn’t much better, posting a 7-25 record from 1969-71.
West Virginia had little trouble with Maryland in 1969 beating the Terrapins 31-7 in Morgantown to end a 21-year drought. Fullback Jim Braxton scored two touchdowns, kicked a 35-yard field goal and converted all four PATs for 19 points in the win.
New West Virginia coach Bobby Bowden gave West Virginia back-to-back victories over the Terps with a triumph in 1970, and a Bowden win in the 1973 opener against Maryland ranks as one of the most memorable victories of the series.
Jerry Claiborne, who took over the Maryland program in 1972 and led the Terrapins to a 5-5 record, was in the process of constructing a powerhouse program rivaling the great Maryland teams of Tatum’s heyday.
In 1973, the two teams played to what appeared to be a 13-all tie. But Claiborne decided to punt the ball back to West Virginia’s Danny Buggs with 32 seconds left on the clock. Buggs took the ball, gave ground, and out-raced the entire Maryland punt team for a 69-yard return for a touchdown that ran off all but eight seconds on the clock. Buggs’ return was easily the most dramatic play of the series.
Another nail biter came in 1977 following Maryland’s easy 24-3 victory over West Virginia in Morgantown on the way to an 11-0 regular season in 1976 and a meeting against Houston in the Cotton Bowl.
West Virginia had fallen on hard times under Coach Frank Cignetti, but the Mountaineers’ performance at No. 11 Maryland in 1977 was considered one of the few bright spots of the late 1970s.
West Virginia shocked Maryland by rolling out to a 24-0 halftime lead, and then had to hang on for dear life to upset the Terps, 24-16. A game-saving tackle made by Tom Pridemore prevented a Maryland touchdown on a free-kick return by Vince Kinney that took the ball to the Mountaineer five.
Maryland tried four cracks at West Virginia’s goal line before the Mountaineer defense stopped Terrapin quarterback Larry Dick at the one on fourth down. Maryland had one more chance to score but a last-second Dick pass fell incomplete in the West Virginia end zone.
By 1980, the West Virginia-Maryland series became an annual occurrence and both teams responded with some memorable clashes.
Claiborne’s 1980 squad had all it wanted with Don Nehlen’s recharged West Virginia program in Morgantown, escaping with a 14-11 victory. Nehlen returned the favor in 1981 with big victory over the favored Terps. Trailing 13-10 with less than five minutes remaining, backup wide receiver Rich Hollins recovered a fumbled punt at the Maryland 12. After a pass interference call placed the ball at the Maryland one, quarterback Oliver Luck took it over to give the Mountaineers a 17-13 triumph.
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| Maryland's Howard Eubanks leaps over the
pile during West Virginia's 19-18 win in 1982. WVU Sports Communications photo |
The 1982 West Virginia-Maryland games was also a thriller. West Virginia, coming off a stunning 41-27 victory at No. 9 Oklahoma, needed a late defensive play on Maryland’s two-point conversion try to clip the Terps, 19-18.
“Our kids had a ton of distractions during the week,” admitted West Virginia coach Don Nehlen.
Maryland, under new coach Bobby Ross, jumped out to a 9-6 halftime lead before West Virginia tied it late in the third quarter on Paul Woodside’s third field goal. Maryland kicker Jess Atkinson answered with a 49-yard boot to put the Terps back ahead before West Virginia quarterback Jeff Hostetler found Rich Hollins for a pretty 35-yard touchdown strike.
Maryland responded with a 16-play drive that covered 75 yards and took nearly six minutes off the clock. At the WVU three, Terp quarterback Boomer Esiason handed off to Maryland fullback Rich Badjanek, who bulled his way in to trim West Virginia’s lead to one, 19-18.
Instead of going for the tie Ross gambled and went for two.
He instructed Esiason to run a roll out with the option of either running or passing to a receiver in the back of the end zone. West Virginia guessed right, blitzed linebackers Darryl Talley and Ed Hughes off the corners, and forced Esaison to throw high of his target in the end zone.
West Virginia’s meeting with Maryland in 1983 wasn’t nearly as dramatic (WVU won 31-21), but the victory was just as important for Mountaineers nonetheless. The 1983 meeting marked the first time in 20 prior games that both teams went into the contest nationally ranked. Two long Jeff Hostetler touchdown passes proved to be the difference.
Maryland got a measure of revenge in 1984, winning the game on a chip-shot Jess Atkinson field goal with 21 seconds left in the game, 20-17.
The Terps took the next two games by a combined score of 52-3 and came from 14 points down to defeat the Mountaineers, 25-20, in 1987.
West Virginia finally took out three years worth of frustration in 1988 by blitzing the Terps 55-24, and pulled out a 14-10 verdict in College Park in 1989. The two teams exchanged wins in 1990 and 1991 to set up another memorable West Virginia victory in 1992.
Maryland, under new coach Mark Duffner, jumped out 17-14 halftime lead and led 33-14 with 10 minutes left in the game. But backup West Virginia quarterback Darren Studstill fired three touchdown passes in the game’s waning minutes to give WVU an exciting 34-33 come-from-behind win. It remains the largest comeback victory in Mountaineer Field history.
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| West Virginia's Renaldo Turnbull puts the
heat on Maryland quarterback Neil O'Donnell in 1988. WVU Sports Communications photo |
West Virginia won again in 1993 in a driving rainstorm at Maryland, outlasting the Terps 42-37 in wild one. Two straight Maryland wins preceded a stretch of three consecutive West Virginia victories from 1996-98.
Maryland blanked West Virginia, 33-0 in College Park in 1999 and West Virginia answered with a 30-17 victory in Morgantown in 2000 in what turned out to be the last seasons for both West Virginia coach Don Nehlen and Maryland coach Ron Vanderlinden. Nehlen left at his own choosing while Vanderlinden did not.
A fourth-quarter goal line stand by West Virginia was a big moment in the game. “All I kept looking for was the official with his hands up and when I didn’t see that, I said ‘Thank the Lord!’” Nehlen said.
That paved the way for Maryland to hire Ralph Friedgen and West Virginia to hire Rich Rodriguez, both returning to their alma maters. Rodriguez is hoping to score one for West Virginia Saturday after dropping four in a row to Maryland, including a 41-7 decision in last year’s Gator Bowl.
Saturday will be the 43rd time these two border rivals will meet on the football field.
Series History Notes:
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Maryland in the Final Rankings |
WVU in the Final Rankings |
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