WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Maryland lost much more than just another game on Saturday. More importantly, the Terrapins lost their top two receivers.
Deon Long and Stefon Diggs both broke their right legs during the Terps’ 34-10 loss to Wake Forest.
Coach Randy Edsall said Long broke his fibula and tibia early in the second quarter while Diggs broke his fibula early in the fourth.
Long was expected to have surgery when the Terps returned to College Park while Diggs’ procedure would come during the week.
“I feel bad for both those guys,” Edsall said. “We’ve got to make sure we move forward. What has to happen is we have to have guys step up and guys go out there and play with the kind of intensity that you have to play with for 60 minutes. We didn’t get that today.”
The Terps (5-2, 1-2) had three turnovers, allowed Wake Forest quarterback Tanner Price to score touchdowns three different ways — rushing, receiving and passing — and were lit up by Maryland native Michael Campanaro, who set a school record with his 217th career reception and also threw and caught touchdown passes.
It all added up to a miserable final trip to Winston-Salem as an Atlantic Coast Conference member for Maryland, which hasn’t won here since 2005.
At least they won’t ever have to come back. In dropping to 1-9 in league road games under Edsall, the Big Ten-bound Terrapins were serenaded by chants of “A-C-C” by the Wake Forest crowd.
“I tried to tell our team that we were going to get their best effort — it was their homecoming, coming off that (N.C. State) win and plus with our situation in the ACC,” Edsall said. “But we didn’t come out and match their intensity early on.”
Price was 26 of 36 through the air for 231 yards for Wake Forest (4-3, 2-2), scored on a 4-yard run and caught a 4-yard TD pass from Campanaro — the trick-play master’s fourth career touchdown throw.
Price hit Campanaro with a 10-yard touchdown pass to become the first player in school history and the fourth Bowl Subdivision player this season to hit the touchdown trifecta. He joined Clemson’s C.J. Spiller as the only ACC players since 2000 to do it.
“That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience and not a whole lot of people have done that,” Price said. “I was pretty excited about that and had a lot of fun doing it.”
Campanaro finished with 11 catches to give him one more reception for his career than Desmond Clark, who set the school record from 1995-98. He broke the record on a 12-yard grab in the final minutes.
“They really made me work for it,” Campanaro said. “That was tough.”
The Clarksville, Md., native leads the ACC in receptions and receiving yardage per game. He finished with 122 yards receiving and was 2 of 2 passing for 29 yards in his final game against his home-state school.
“When you hear plays like that called from the sideline, you kind of get excited but you’ve got to calm down — you don’t want to mess it up,” Campanaro said of his passes. “That was fun. Tanner and I switched roles for a play.”
Josh Harris’ 1-yard touchdown run on the opening series put the Demon Deacons on their way to their fourth straight home victory over the Terrapins.
Backup Caleb Rowe threw a 56-yard touchdown pass to Levern Jacobs to briefly pull Maryland to 24-10 midway through the third quarter.
Price restored Wake Forest’s three-touchdown lead with his scoring pass on the next possession, and Chad Hedlund put the Demon Deacons up by 24 with a 38-yard field goal with 7:46 to play.
Starter C.J. Brown was 15 of 24 for 137 yards in his return from a concussion for Maryland. But he was constantly harassed by nose tackle Nikita Whitlock, threw two interceptions in the second quarter that led directly to Price’s first two touchdowns and was replaced by Rowe midway through the third.
“Things that I saw, it was the best thing for our team to do to try and move the ball in the second half,” Edsall said.
Rowe finished 15 of 27 for 207 yards. Maryland’s 383-307 advantage in total yardage was mitigated by those three turnovers.
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