Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: Direction Of Buffs' Season Takes Ugly Turn
September 08, 2012 | Football, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER - Where to from here for the Colorado Buffaloes? At this point, the only answer available that carries any degree of certainty is...west.
The schedule says it's on to Fresno State next Saturday night for the final non-conference game. From there it's back on the road for the Pac-12 Conference opener at Washington State.
We could go on, but the reality here is that if Games 1-2 of the 2012 season are your only barometer, you're expecting the Buffs to be in freefall by month's end - if they're not already there.
The cynics among you - and your numbers are mushrooming - will say losses to Colorado State (22-17) and Sacramento State (30-28) are signal enough that CU's bowl goal belongs in layaway for 2013. And it's hard to argue against that.
After the humbling CSU loss, Sacramento State was to be Sacrificial State on Saturday at Folsom Field. That wasn't close to the message that CU coach Jon Embree spent the past five days delivering to his team before their home opener, even though some of his guys might not have believed it.
Embree warned them they were in for a fistfight, albeit against a program from a lower division (CU is FBS, Sac State is FCS; flag the NCAA for that blatant BS). Embree told the Buffs about the Hornets visiting Oregon State last season and winning 29-28 in overtime. He told the Buffs they weren't nearly good enough to merely "show up" and collect a 'W.'
If it hadn't sunken in Monday through Friday, the brutal truth had enveloped and inundated the Buffs by late Saturday afternoon.
After the opening loss to CSU, which featured as many head-scratching decisions as ugly plays, there were questions from the outside of whether the Buffs could clear out the Rams residue and not let that defeat become a season-killer.
CU junior inside linebacker Derrick Webb contended on Saturday there had been no CSU hangover. "Most definitely (not)," he said. "We had been prepared for Sac State, Sac State, Sac State. This loss wasn't because of CSU. Point blank, what happened out there is we left too many plays on the field and they made more plays than we did."
But Embree obviously wants more specific answers than that. At his post-game media conference, he said a staff meeting was scheduled "in about 19 minutes" and that all positions - players, not coaches - would be reevaluated. So when the Buffs show up next weekend in Fresno, there might be more new looks than they showed against Sac State.
Saturday's most noticeable were freshmen Christian Powell opening at tailback and Yuri Wright and Kenneth Crawley opening as cornerbacks and Marques Mosley at nickel. And there were many more.
Powell, a 235-pounder who had spent all of August at his recruited position of fullback, carried 28 times for 147 yards and three touchdowns. Maybe CU found an able big-bodied back for its off-and-on ground game.
"I like getting the rock . . . that doesn't really happen as much when you're just playing fullback." said Powell, who shed nearly 25 pounds (he was close to 260 on his recruiting visit) before camp opened. "But whatever they ask of me, whether it's playing tailback or fullback, that's what I'm going to try to do."
Wright and Crawley had their moments, making plays, giving up plays, drawing flags. They're first-year players, future playmakers. Embree said Wright, Crawley, Powell and the rest of the freshmen are "our guys, I don't care what year they are. They're going to make mistakes, but there's other guys playing, too. We knew coming in that we were going to play a lot of young guys . . . it is what it is with that."
On what ended as a second consecutive disturbing afternoon, CU's most disturbing sequence was Sac State's final 72-yard drive that culminated with junior Edgar Castaneda's 30-yard field goal on the game's final play. (Here's your feel good-story on CU's bad-feeling Saturday: A former walk-on, Castaneda was awarded a scholarship following the team's post-game meeting.)
After allowing the Hornets to score on their last four possessions of the first half and take a 24-21 lead at intermission, the Buffs bucked up defensively in the second half. On five of the visitor's previous second-half possessions, CU forced four punts and allowed a 31-yard field goal that allowed the Hornets to pull to 28-27.
"It was game time," Webb said of his defense's second-half upgrade. "Coming out (of halftime) we had to make up our minds to bear down and play harder on defense. It was more of a pride thing, more of a want-to in the second half. We stepped it up a little bit in the second half. We just played harder. That's all we did."
It just didn't last long enough. Sac State began its eventual game-winning drive at its own 15 with 2:26 to play. The Hornets reeled off four consecutive first downs, moving to the Buffs' 34 before "uh ohs" began reverberating through Folsom.
Said Webb: "It was a two-minute situation; we wanted to make them eat up a little clock, then the closer they got to field goal range, that's when we wanted to tighten down, buckle down and stop them from getting in field goal range."
CU defensive end Chidera Uzo-Diribe said his unit wasn't concerned "at all . . . earlier in the half we had held them to a field goal and a three-and-out, so we were very confident our defense was going to make a stop and we were going to win the game."
But that stop never came and neither did the win.
"This one hurts - a lot," Uzo-Diribe said. "All of the other guys, they feel the same way."
That includes his coaches. Embree and his staff remain puzzled about what they witnessed on the practice field in August remaining there in September.
"For whatever reason, the team that's practicing isn't necessarily coming consistently every . . . Saturday," Embree said. "And that's another one of those things we need to look at and figure out why."
Two weeks ago, Embree emphasized that submitting a strong September was mandatory for the Buffs to achieve their bowl goal. Two games into the season's first month, from what we've seen of his team, the postseason has never seemed so far away.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
