COLLEGE PARK — After the Maryland football team lost for the first time under coach DJ Durkin last week at Penn State, practices began to resemble more of what the Terps did in the spring and summer rather than the first four weeks of the season.
Minus the cold mornings in March and April, and the hot afternoons in July and August, Durkin might try to recreate those practices this week as Maryland attempts to recover from its second straight blowout defeat, a 31-10 loss at home to Minnesota on Saturday.
One thing is clear: the depth chart could be undergoing a major renovation.
"Coach probably wants to go out and see who's going to be willing to lay it on the line for the guys next to you," junior linebacker Jermaine Carter Jr. said. "Who's willing to put their body through everything they can withstand?"
Said senior cornerback Alvin Hill: "He's going to have to pull out those guys that he's looking for. At practice, we're going to have competition, open competition for guys he feels are capable of going out there to perform. Tough guys, hard-working guys, mentally tough. That's how we're going to go in there."
Maryland (4-2, 1-2 Big Ten Conference) will host Michigan State (2-4, 0-3) on Saturday night.
"We've got an unbelievable opportunity coming up, man," Durkin said. "It's a Big Ten East game, it's a night game. It'll be a great environment. We've got a great opportunity ahead of us. That's what you do. You bounce back and go back to work."
Though the status of senior quarterback Perry Hills, who sat out the game against Minnesota with an injured right shoulder, and senior cornerback-return specialist Will Likely, who came out of the game with an undetermined injury, is unclear, Durkin believes he has a team that can pull off the win.
"We'll have enough guys to do it," he said. "It's our job to find out who those guys are and put them in the right place. What a great opportunity. Coming off a loss and having a big game at home, nothing better than that. Can't design it any better than that. The guys who want to take advantage of that, that's who we'll go with and go play and be ready to go."
Though the Spartans have come crashing down from their status as a team ranked in the preseason top-10 with four straight defeats after Saturday's 54-40 loss to Northwestern, the Terps will certainly treat the perennial Big Ten power with respect.
"Michigan State's definitely a good football team," Hill said, speaking before the Spartans lost.
Given that Minnesota was looking for its first Big Ten win Saturday, Maryland will face another desperate team. The difference is that the Terps will have their own level of urgency ratcheted up a few notches after dismal performance.
"It's definitely humbling," Hill said. "You go into the season feeling that you're going to win all the games. After having your two losses, you've got to come back to your fundamentals, you've got to see how you won those games, and then you've got to see how you lost those games and see how you make those adjustments. We're definitely going to go back to our base. We're a mentally tough team, we've got to do what we've been doing."
Carter said that it's up to the veterans to lead a team that started three true freshmen Saturday, most notably quarterback Tyrrell Pigrome, against the Golden Gophers.
"It's definitely on us older guys, we've been here so long, we have so much invested into the program, we have to show the younger guys it means so much to us," Carter said. "If it means a lot to us, they're going to give a better effort if we lead by example."
At the end of his news conference Saturday, Durkin was asked if there's a way to recreate the energy from the spring practices, preseason training camp and first month of the season.
"We plan that every week," he said. "We didn't plan on not have energy. We come in every Sunday and evaluate where we're at, who's playing, who's doing what, what do we have to do to win the game? We'll do the same thing tomorrow and go figure out a plan to beat Michigan State."