MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia opens its 2021 football season this Saturday at Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium against border rival Maryland in a contest that will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN.
It will be the 53
rd meeting between these two old rivals and the first since 2015 when Maryland was year-old members of the Big Ten Conference. The two schools played annually from 2010-15 and from 1980-2007 when the Terps were in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Prior to 1980, the series was played sporadically from 1943 until 1977. The first meeting in 1919 was in Morgantown when the Terps were then known as the Maryland Aggies.
West Virginia has won nine out of the last 10 games in the series to take an overall 28-22-2 lead. The Mountaineers' record in College Park is 13-11-1.
Maryland's last victory came at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Sept. 21, 2013 when the Terps blanked the Mountaineers 37-0. The last time these two teams met in College Park on Sept. 13, 2014, WVU got a 47-yard field goal from Josh Lambert on the game's final play in front of a crowd of 48,154 to pull out an exciting 40-37 victory.
Neal Brown and Mike Locksley will be facing each other for the first time as collegiate coaches.
Brown will preview Saturday's tilt during his weekly news conference on Tuesday at noon in the Team Room at the Milan Puskar Center. His news conference will be live streamed on football's official
Facebook and
Twitter accounts.
West Virginia's depth chart for the opener will be released on Tuesday morning, according to football's sports information director
Mike Montoro.
