Locksley leads Maryland against alma mater Towson in final nonconference game

It’s once again a homecoming week of sorts for Maryland coach Mike Locksley, who welcomes his alma mater, Towson, to College Park this Saturday as the Terrapins round out their nonconference schedule.

“It’s been a great place for me,” Locksley said Tuesday.” It was right down the road from home, so I was able to still get back and forth from home and earn a great business degree in marketing. So, [I’m a] byproduct of the Tigers.”

Locksley starred as a safety at the Baltimore County school from 1988-91, including being named the team’s defensive MVP his senior season. It’s also the place that launched his coaching career in 1992, and something even more valuable than football.

“I think the biggest thing I got from Towson was I got married,” Locksley said. “I met my wife [Kia] there. So I was really fortunate. Towson hooked me up, man.”

The Terrapins (2-0) enter the game off a gritty 20-9 win over Northern Illinois last week that extended their Football Bowl Subdivision-best nonconference winning streak to 17 games.

“I’ll never take for granted being 2-0. It’s hard to win,” Locksley said. “It’s good for us to get off to a good start. There are a lot of teams in the country that aren’t sitting at 2-0, so as I told our team yesterday, we definitely have to acknowledge that we’ve been able to handle the first two opportunities and get out with wins while still being able to grow, learn and mature as a team.”

Maryland struggled to get NIU off the field in the first half, with the Huskies converting 50% of their third and fourth down opportunities, “testing” the Terrapins’ defense, Locksley said.

“We played a lot of plays on defense because of their ability to convert third downs,” Locksley said. So this week we spent a lot of time — again — trying to evaluate what we’re doing and how we’re doing it and the people that are doing it.”

While not yet looking as prolific as it did during the Taulia Tagovailoa era, Maryland’s offense has shown flashes of potential under freshman quarterback Malik Washington’s leadership while being able to limit the mistakes that plagued last season.

“On offense, you have five self-inflicted ways to beat yourself. And two games ago, the first game of the year, we were at about 20% of our plays contain one of those self-inflicted errors. Well, we were under 10% this game,” Locksley said. “So if you’re looking for the momentum, the scoreboard doesn’t always tell you, but I can tell you, we played a lot cleaner as a team.”

Penalties also decreased from a near program record of 14 in Week 1 to just 3 for 30 yards against NIU.

“As expected, with a young, inexperienced team, we’re still working to correct some things that allow us to be the best version of ourselves,” Locksley said.

Towson (2-0) provides the final opportunity for the Terrapins to do that before the rigors of the nine-game Big Ten schedule begin.

“Just capitalizing on every possession,” Washington said. “In this game, sometimes, it gets hard. Those possessions become few and far between the way the game is played later in the season, with a lot of teams kind of being run-heavy.”