Picked to pieces

The Terrapins football team was 35 yards away from completing the unthinkable.

After trailing by as many as 24 points in the second half, the Terps had strung together a remarkable comeback and were marching toward then-No. 18 West Virginia's goal line late in the fourth quarter with a chance to steal their first win over the Mountaineers since 2003.

But any hope proved to last as quickly as it had started. Quarterback Danny O'Brien threw his third interception of the day to end the Terps' late push, sealing the 37-31 victory for West Virginia.

Just like that, Randy Edsall's brief honeymoon in College Park was over. What could have been a season-defining comeback victory will instead go down as an all-too-familiar result between the regional rivals.

"I don't expect anyone to quit," Edsall said before charging away from the podium and cutting his postgame news conference short. "I'm going to tell you this: On a Randy Edsall-football coached team, there ain't ever going to be any quit.

"If there is somebody who is going to quit, they aren't going to be on this team. … These kids respect the game too much to give anything but their best effort. And I guarantee you that is what you will see out of Maryland football."

To be sure, the Terps (1-1) didn't quit. The hole they dug themselves in the first half, though, simply proved too deep to climb out of.

The Terps barely had a pulse during the first half. The explosive offense on display in their season-opening win over Miami suddenly became anemic, perhaps due in part to the suspensions of starting wide receivers Quintin McCree and Ronnie Tyler. O'Brien, meanwhile, couldn't find his rhythm and had two first-half passes picked off, one of which was returned for a touchdown.

On the other side of the ball, the defense struggled to deal with the Mountaineers' athleticism. Led by quarterback Geno Smith's career-high 388 passing yards and shifty wide receiver Tavon Austin (122 receiving yards), West Virginia (3-0) didn't punt the ball until midway through the third quarter.

But after the Mountaineers opened the second half with a touchdown to extend their lead to 34-10, something clicked on the Terps' sideline.

As the defense bore down, ending three consecutive Mountaineers drives with two punts and an interception, O'Brien found his way. He sliced West Virginia's defense with a barrage of quick-hitting passes, at one point completing 12 straight. And with a running attack revamped by the return of short-yardage back D.J. Adams (64 yards, two touchdowns), the Terps struck a second-half balance that led to 21 consecutive points and cut the deficit to only three.

A West Virginia field goal with 4:42 left to play in the fourth quarter kept it a one-possession game, and the Terps quickly drove to the Mountaineers' 35-yard line on their would-be comeback march downfield.

It was there that O'Brien forced a third-down pass intended for wide receiver Tony Logan into traffic, deflating Byrd Stadium's fifth-largest all-time crowd and dashing the Terps' hopes at a remarkable comeback. West Virginia safety Eain Smith jumped the route and came up with the ball to seal the Mountaineers' sixth straight win in the border war.

"You can't turn the ball over three times … and expect to beat a ranked team," a dejected O'Brien, who threw for 289 yards and a touchdown despite his struggles, said after the game. "We had a chance to win. The defense held them to three and kept us in it."

Clearly Saturday's superior second-half team, the Terps proved they could play with the Mountaineers.

They'd simply spotted West Virginia too many points.

"We can't put ourselves in a hole like that," said wide receiver Kevin Dorsey, who led the Terps with 79 receiving yards and a touchdown. "Even though we came out firing in the second half, it's just too hard of a deficit to try to fight your way out of."

It could have been an impressive start to Edsall's tenure in College Park, proof these Terps could move beyond the disappointments of recent seasons.

Instead, they're now left with a week to ponder what could have been after a result that was just more of the same.

"We beat them in the second half, but it just wasn't enough," defensive tackle Joe Vellano said. "It's just tough because I think how hard we were playing in the second half … [had] we played like that the whole game, it would've been a totally different game. It was right there in arm's reach."

cwalsh@umdbk.com