MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The guessing is about to end. 
 
Two good recruiting classes in a row have certainly replenished a West Virginia football program that now has more good football players running around here since probably 2016 – the last time the Mountaineers had a 10-win season, by the way – but will that be enough for Neal Brown's program to take the next step in its climb to national prominence?
 
We should start getting some answers to that question around 7 p.m. Saturday evening in College Park, Maryland.
 
Mike Locksley's Maryland Terrapins are certainly flying under the radar this year. The Terps return 17 starters on both sides of the football, but yet they still have an extremely inexperienced team with just five players with 10 or more career starts. That's because COVID-19 limited Maryland to only five games in 2020, which means West Virginia's coaches don't have a whole lot on which to go.
 
Locksley has won just eight of the 51 games during the six years he's coached at New Mexico and Maryland, and he's already working on a new set of coordinators during his current stint at Maryland.
 
Dan Enos is now running the Maryland offense, Brian Stewart is coordinating the Terrapin defense and longtime coach Ron Zook is back operating the Maryland special teams.
 
Enos hasn't called plays since he was fired at Miami in 2019. Stewart hasn't called defenses since 2017 and Zook was last running special teams for the Salt Lake Stallions in 2019.
 
That meant a long visit deep into the archives for Brown's staff of analysts.
 
"We're trying to use our best guesses on what we're going to see," Brown admitted Tuesday.
 
What he does know is that Locksley's staff has assembled lots of top-end talent in College Park, particularly at the skill positions where Maryland seems to always turn out explosive playmakers. Brown believes Maryland's set of wide receivers this year compare favorably to Oklahoma's.
 
He is also impressed with what he's seen of the Terrapin secondary, all of them weighing more than 200 pounds and all but one standing taller than 6 feet.
 
Up front, Mosiah Nasili-Kite led the Big Ten in sacks last year averaging 0.8 per game, and Brown is impressed with what he's seen on tape of jack linebacker Durrell NcHami, particularly what he did in last year's Rutgers game.
 
Offensively, Taulia Tagovailoa will finally get a chance to show what he can do for a full football season after transferring from Alabama. Last year, the 5-foot-11, 205 pounder, completed 62% of his 122 pass attempts for 1,011 yards with seven touchdowns and seven interceptions.
 
Dontay Demus Jr., a 6-foot-3, 217 pounder, and speedster Rakim Jarrett, a 6-foot, 200 pounder, could be as good as any pair of wide receivers West Virginia faces this year.
 
West Virginia, too, has much more top-shelf talent than it did three years ago when Brown took over after four seasons at Troy.
 
Dante Stills is poised to have a breakout senior season, and tailback Leddie Brown is anxious to build on his 1,000-yard season in 2020.
 
The names Bryce Ford-Wheaton, Winston Wright Jr., Sam James, Kaden Prather, Zach Frazier, Doug Nester, Akheem Mesidor, VanDarius Cowan, Scottie Young, Nicktroy Fortune and Sean Mahone should become more recognizable to college football fans this year.
 
Brown is also eager to get out on the road and prove that his team's winless record there last season was just a one-year blip on the radar. Two years ago, his team won big road games at Kansas State and TCU to conclude the 2019 campaign on a strong note.
 
He's hoping for another strong road performance at Maryland to ring in 2021.
 
"I'm glad we're on the road to start off," he said. "We had our struggles there last year so we're looking to play much improved than we did a year ago on the road."
 
Maryland is not going to be welcoming, for sure. Earlier this week, the school announced all of its student tickets for Saturday's season opener have been distributed, meaning more than 11,000 screaming students packing the stands.
 
Last year's COVID-19 restrictions have something to do with it, of course, as do the Mountaineers, who Old Line State residents consider one of Maryland's biggest rivals.
 
At least this week, Locksley is certainly buying into it to help sell tickets.
 
"West Virginia is one of our greatest rivalries going back decades," he said. "This is a great opportunity for us to not only play them, but to open our season against them. I know our fans are excited about it."
 
West Virginia's, too. There will certainly be a lot of Flying WVs in the parking lots on Saturday.
 
Saturday's game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN (Anish Shroff, Mike Golic Jr. and Taylor McGregor). Mountaineer Sports Network Radio coverage with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace, Jed Drenning, Dan Zangrilli and Dale Wolfley begins with the Mountaineer Tailgate Show at noon on stations throughout West Virginia and online via WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app WVU Gameday.
 
This will be West Virginia's 26^th visit to College Park and its first since 2014 when Josh Lambert kicked a 47-yard field goal on the final play of the game to defeat the Terrapins 40-37. WVU owns a 13-11-1 advantage in games played in College Park and holds a 28-22-2 overall record.
 
WVU has won nine out of the last 10 games dating back to a 2004 overtime win in Morgantown. That snapped Maryland's four-game winning streak.