New head coaches and their staffs always bring new faces along with changes in scheme and terminology. That much is a given with coaching turnover.
In rare occasions, you can even sense a change of energy from a peek inside a program, and that's exactly what DJ Durkin and his staff at Maryland have done judging by this video on spring practice that they released yesterday. You can see that the energy at Maryland has definitely shifted, and Durkin laid out what he's looking for during spring ball from his guys.
"Just go hard and give every ounce of everything that you have. We have a saying with our guys, we say 'lets go as hard as we can, as fast as we can, for as long as we can, and don't worry," Durkin explained during a team meeting before hitting the field.
"Guess what? Let's hold the suspense here...you're going to screw something up, we all are. Let's just do it really fast, really hard, and learn that because I believe that at some point it's going to come down to 1-on-1 with the guy across from you and if you're playing with the right technique, and you're playing as hard as you possibly can - I mean playing to like an inspiring level to where people around you are like 'Wow, look at that guy.'"
"That, to me is how you win games, when you've got a team of guys doing that."
Then Durkin went on to explain the evolution of this new Terps team, starting with the day they walked in from Christmas break, and what the type of team he hopes will continue to evolve into the fall.
"They went from walking in the building after Christmas break, having no idea what to expect, and then they reached a point, probably a week in, where it was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is really hard. Do I really want to do this?' There's that stage."
"We're starting to get to the point where they are starting to embrace it, and actually starting to enjoy hard work. By the end of spring I want to get to the point where you're doing some hard stuff, and you get that grin on your face, like 'Oh this is crazy now. This is good.' And you start to embrace it."
"That is the evolution. I want to watch that and monitor it, and be part of the story from now until the season of we're enjoying the grind together, and we're appreciating the grind and we're thankful for the grind because we know it's making our body callused to what we're going to face during the season."