Maryland head coach DJ Durkin on New Cole Field House: 'We'll be second to none'

New Maryland head coach DJ Durkin has been making the rounds on local radio stations since he assumed his new job. He gave some interesting new updates in an in interview with 106.7 The Fan on Tuesday. Here's some of what he said:

He emphasized, like many others have before him, that the New Cole Fieldhouse will be a huge recruiting tool.

"Our building will be the nicest in the country," he said. "We'll be second to none."

He's hoping that will lead into Maryland getting more in-state players to stay at home. "It'll turn into a self-feeding monster," Durkin said.

Durkin didn't commit to running the spread or a pro-style offense. He also didn't commit to one defense full-time. Maryland just switched to the 4-3 last season, which is what Durkin ran in his one season at Michigan. But in the interview, he said he plans on using both the 4-3 and the 3-4 alignments as coach.

"We'll be multiple, that's what you need to be," he said. "It depends on who you're playing and what your personnel is. I think the worst thing you can do is to say, 'this is my system, this is what we're doing, and you might not have the right players to do that system."

He didn't really provide an update on former interim head coach Mike Locksley, whom he was pictured with on a recruiting visit Monday.

Mike obviously does an outstanding job in this area and he's from this area, and you can't say enough about the work he does to bring in great talent and also coach on the field. We've had extensive conversations, and they're continuing, ongoing about how this will work. There's some give-and-take on both sides, and we have been together recruiting, going through the whole thing. We'll know more about that as we move on here.

Durkin made it clear that he'd use his past experience at Florida to try to get more recruits from southern states up to Maryland.

Our second priority is down south. Up in the DMV area, up in Jersey, down to Virginia beach, that's all our main area, where we're going to make our living, for the most part. And yes, we're going to reach down into Florida and South Florida, into Georgia, where myself and some of the other guys on the staff have really good recruiting ties, and areas that are rich in talent every year.

Here's how Durkin described his general offensive strategy:

Offensively speaking, we're going to be a very aggressive team. We've got to be better at the line of scrimmage, we've got to be able to run the ball and establish the run, but also stretch the field vertically. I think you either need to be better or different than the team's you're facing. So we're going to be creative in how we run the ball, and creative in how we do things, but again, aggressive. We're going to be aggressive in all we do: special teams, offense and defense.

On the recruits:

It's a special group of guys. They've been in constant communication with one another and have been recruiting one another. The feedback I've gotten has been amazing. They're choosing Maryland for many reasons and they're staying strong together, and now trying to go out and recruit other guys. I think that says a lot about them character-wise

On announcing an offensive staff:

Soon. I don't want put a timetable on it. There's some things, obviously, that we're working through and some things that we're trying to get done. I want to be really methodical about this. I'm not in a hurry to do anything, and I know it's obviously a time-sensitive thing with recruiting, but you don't want to make a decision just based on that. In the next couple days, there should be something more on that.

Check out the whole interview here.