| The last time Ohio State visited College Park was in 2018 the week before they faced Michigan, needing a win to stay in the College Football Playoff, and pulling it out with a 2 point conversion stop, to win 52-51. Very similar situation this year, although under Jim Bowles, the Buckeye defense is not facing the questions than they were in 2018. These two programs had never met prior to the Terps joining the Big Ten, but they've met seven times in the eight seasons since. The one consistent has been Maryland's complete inability even slow down the Ohio State attack. In those 7 games, Ohio State has averaged 59.4 ppg. The fewest points they've scored? 49. Otherwise they've scored at least 52, and they've gone over 60 in 4 of 7 games. Clearly Maryland isn't scoring 50 points, even even Tagovailoa is healthy. So can the Terps hold Ohio State to a reasonable margin? They could hold them to 25 points below their average in this series, and still need 35 points to win. Scorign points has rarely been a problem for Maryland under Mike Locksley, but recently it has. Maryland has scored a TOTAL of 10 points over the past two weeks against Wisconsin and Penn State, after averaging 34.1 ppg in the 8 games prior. Is Taulia Tagovailoa healthy? He missed the Northwestern game, which sort of excused that game being close, but in the two games back, both losses, where Maryland failed to score a non garbage time touchdown, he's been 21-45 (46.7%) for 151 yards (75.5 ypg, 3.36 ypa) with a QBR of 10.4. Taulia at home, where he hasn't been since the second week of October, looks to be a totally different player. In his two home Big Ten games, against Michigan State and Purdue, he averaged 315 ypg, on over 70% completions. So I think the Terps offense wake up this week, after two bad games, but I also think the performance of Maryland's defense against Ohio State's offense continues as is. |
