Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz talks about the upcoming season.

Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz (file photo)

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz says his team’s season will be determined by how much progress is made in the second half. The Hawkeyes sit at the midway point 5-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big Ten heading into this week’s visit to Maryland.

“We’ve been in this position, we’ve been in positions really close to this….really it’s the second half of the season that determines typically who we are,” Ferentx says. Jake Rudock and C.J. Beatherd will both continue to see action. Rudock got the majority of the snaps in a 45-29 win over Indiana.

“I thought he played really well, we expect Jake to play well. We expect C.J. to play well. I thought he played well when he was in there. That’s one position where I feel pretty good about, knowing what we are going to get,” Ferentz says.

It’s Iowa first trip to Maryland in the Terrapins’ first season in the Big Ten. Ferenz says it is probably a lot like when the team went to play Pittsburgh in 2008 as noone had been there before. He says they’ll look around a little bit and realize it’s another stadium and then get to playing the game.

The Hawkeyes have played well away from home in the last couple of years and have won six of their last seven road games. “To me it’s mostly mind set, I can’t tell why one team is better at it than another, to me it’s probably about 98 percent mindset,” Ferentz says.

Ferentz says the Iowa defense must do a better job of limiting big plays. Indiana’s Tevin Coleman broke loose for three long touchdown runs on Saturday. He says there was some miscalculation and some of the angles taken weren’t good and there were missed tackles against a strong runner.

Maryland enters the game with a record of 4-2 and has been idle since a lopsided loss at home to Ohio State back on October fourth.