Florida St. 41, Maryland 16

Florida St. 41, Maryland 16

Published Oct. 23, 2011 12:42 a.m. ET

EJ Manuel passed for 264 yards and a touchdown, and freshman Devonta Freeman ran for 100 yards a second straight week as Florida State routed Maryland 41-16 on Saturday.

Jermaine Thomas chipped in with 86 yards and a 35-yard rushing score for the Seminoles (4-3, 2-2 Atlantic Coast Conference.)

Dustin Hopkins added a pair of field goals for the winners, but had his consecutive streak stopped at 17 when his first attempt narrowly missed.

Maryland (2-5, 1-3) got its first touchdown on Danny O'Brien's 5-yard run in the third quarter. O'Brien replaced starting quarterback C.J. Brown, who left the game four minutes into the second half after a vicious helmet-to-helmet collision with Florida State's Nigel Bradham, who was penalized for the hit.

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Florida State had 482 yards to Maryland's 331.

Florida State built its largest lead at 41-10 on Debrale Smiley `s 1-yard TD run with 47 seconds left in the game. Freeman's 41-yard TD with 5:57 left had put the Seminoles into a 34-10 lead.

The Seminoles, who have had a tough time getting a ground game untracked all season, finished with 218 rushing yards Saturday. Freeman had 100 yards on the nose on 11 carries while Thomas, who has been working his way into a more prominent role the last couple of weeks, added 86 more yards on 9 carries and caught a pass for 25 yards.

Manuel started red-hot for the second straight week. He hit 8 of his first 9 passes for 120 yards, including a 26-yard TD throw to Kenny Shaw to climax a 90-yard drive and give Florida State a 14-0 lead 10 minutes into the game. Manuel earlier scored the game's first touchdown on a 7-yard run.

Hopkins 38-yard field goal boosted Florida State's lead to 17-0 with 2:35 left in the half and Maryland answered on Nick Ferrara's 23-yardfield goal on the final play of the half.

O'Brien's 69-yard pass to Quintin McCree gave Maryland a first down at Florida State's 6 to set up his own scoring run in the third quarter. O'Brien, last year's ACC Rookie of the Year, completed 9 of 18 passes for 180 yards and a touchdown - a 15-yard throw to Marcus Leak with 5 seconds left in the game.

Brown, however, had a rough afternoon before leaving the game. He passed for 92 yards, but did not gain any yards on 10 rushing attempts after gaining 286 yards in Maryland's two previous games.

McCree had a big game with 9 catches for 177 yards.

Maryland running back Davin Meggett led the Terps with 44 yards and moved past 2,000 career rushing yards on his first carry of the game.

Florida State climbed over the .500 with its second straight win following three straight losses that endangered its ACC title hopes.

Coincidentally, it was Florida State's second consecutive win by a 41-16 score following consecutive losses by the identical 35-30 margins.

Florida State's four victories this season have all come against teams with losing records.

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