Black Bears hope to find out about themselves vs. NU
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BY CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star
Minus detours and wrong turns, it’s roughly 1,728 miles from Orono, Maine, to Lincoln, and if the Black Bears pull off the unfathomable in Memorial Stadium tonight, well. ...
“I’d walk back, probably, myself,” Maine coach Jack Cosgrove said. “I’d want to relish that one.”
It should be noted Cosgrove didn’t hoof the 1,567 miles from Starkville, Miss., back home following his team’s victory at Mississippi State last season. But who could blame the guy if he really did pack his hiking shoes and pedometer along with Maine’s game plan for this weekend?
About now, Cosgrove would tell you you’re getting carried away by such thoughts. Maine, after all, is an NCAA Division I-AA program taking on one that has been among the best in I-A. Next week, the Black Bears will face William Penn, an NAIA school from Oskaloosa, Iowa. That matchup might be more even.
If Maine won tonight, it’d become the instant favorite to capture the ESPY for most shocking sports victory of the year.
It’s why Cosgrove allows that his team, which has 31 first-year players, should be after more than just a W.
“Our identity is still trying to be established,” he said. “All coaches talk about how tough are you — mentally and physically. What are your strengths and weaknesses —so you know the things you need to feature and those things you need to work on. We’re going to find out a lot about that throughout the course of the 60 minutes on Saturday.”
Cosgrove is excited after having witnessed more players taking to their coaches’ instruction and developing a better unity — intangibles that were characteristic of Maine’s 2001 and ‘02 Atlantic 10 Conference championship teams.
Of course, true identity usually becomes more evident in the heat of battle.
“It’ll be interesting for all of us to see who we are and how far we can go with an opponent like Nebraska,” said Cosgrove, who’s in his 13th season as head coach.
Maine is no stranger to opening a season against a tough opponent. Last year, the Black Bears played at Montana, which advanced to the I-AA national championship game before losing a one-pointer to another Black Bear regular-season opponent, James Madison.
Cosgrove believes preparations for tonight’s game have gone differently, because in addition to the high number of newcomers, another 11 players already in the program missed spring practice.
“The key for us this preseason was really developing who we are,” Cosgrove said. “You have to know who you are before you can figure out what you can become, and so we spent a ton of time just trying to almost ignore Nebraska, if you can believe that. I felt like our guys were as excited as they’re ever going to be about a game, so we really kind of just kept hammering, ‘Who are we? What can we do on offense? What can we do on defense? What are we gonna be like on the special teams, and who’s going to be playing for us?’
“We had some holes to fill and young guys are going to have to take on those roles. We’re excited about what we’re seeing. The challenge for us is that we don’t get to do this against a Northeast Division I-AA team. We’ve got to do it against one of the premier programs in the country, and your margin for error is just not very, very good.”
Like Nebraska, Maine is coming off an unexpected 5-6 season. The Black Bears lost four of their games by seven or fewer points.
“I think it’s clear that when it comes to the end of games, we’re going to be a better team,” junior quarterback Ron Whitcomb said. “And that’s where we lost games last year. If we (are stronger in the late stages), we will be a playoff team. Within our league, the talent is pretty much the same level.”
In nearly the same breath, Whitcomb acknowledges that tonight is “a little different, because nobody in our league will have nearly the talent.”
Cosgrove — who returned to his alma mater as quarterbacks and wide receivers coach in 1987 after spending two seasons as an offensive assistant at Boston College — still insists the Black Bears will shoot for the moon tonight and try to pull off a shocker.
He’s also prepared, though, for a much different scenario.
“You need to be ready to make some decisions that you might not normally make if things go in a real negative way,” he said. “There’s a piece of paper on my desk that lists the positives and the negatives of what could happen and how I might think about responding to keep this thing, obviously, in perspective and in control because of the future that’s in front of us and the impending Atlantic 10 schedule.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
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