Brooks: Buffs Shift Gears (No Downshifting, Please) For Colonels

BOULDER – For two weeks now, Mike MacIntyre's objectives as Colorado's football coach have been very close to being polar opposites but remarkably similar nonetheless.

How can that be?

Last week as the Buffs prepared to play their intense in-state rival – Colorado State – MacIntyre wanted his team to be aware of the stakes yet to treat it as any other game. Not a novel approach, but the Buffs successfully walked that ultra-fine line, showing enough perseverance to rally from an early 14-0 deficit and enough late grit to make decisive plays and win on a field goal in overtime (27-24).

This week he's instructing his players to approach Saturday's, ah, not-so-marquee first-ever matchup with Nicholls State as they would any other contest. Again, not a novel approach, but in all fairness and in no way demeaning the Colonels, the difficulty of this week's sales job outdistances last week's by miles. And miles. And more miles.

With the Buffs opening their Pac-12 Conference schedule a week from Saturday against defending league champ and current No. 13 Oregon, Nicholls State might qualify as a trap game. But let's be honest: If the Buffs stumble into this trap, an avalanche of pink slips might bury the athletic department.

Nicholls State football is in the midst of hard times. The Thibodaux, La., school hasn't won a game since Oct. 12, 2013 – a program-worst 20-game losing streak – and has dropped 14 consecutive road games, a streak that also dates to 2013 when that season ended with six consecutive losses.

A dozen losses followed in 2014, with another two (both on the road) to open 2015. Thus, the Southland Conference school's 20-game skid.

Those aren't numbers that MacIntyre wants his players committing to memory. Furthermore, while his team continues to grow weekly, he believes it is now mature enough to maintain its game-by-game focus and resist the temptation to look ahead.

Quarterback Sefo Liufau underscored that belief on Tuesday. He said preparing for and playing the Colonels this week with the Ducks on deck would "definitely" test the Buffs' maturity. Disregard Nicholls State's 0-2 record and the losing streak, he added: "They'll be fired up to come here and play us."

Safety Tedric Thompson, whose blocked field goal against CSU positioned CU for its OT win, conceded that it was difficult to keep his thoughts from straying to the Pac-12 opener. "Sometimes, but I stop myself," he said. "I don't look into the future until it's there. I'm not really focusing on anything (but Nicholls State)."

That's what MacIntyre wants to hear, and he was further inspired at Monday's weekly meeting of his 12-member Leadership Council when several upperclassmen urged him to revisit CU's 2012 Sacramento State debacle. The Buffs lost 30-28 to the FCS school on a last-second field goal and would finish the season 1-11.

"They said, 'Coach, show the Sac State game, show highlights of the Sac State game,'" MacIntyre said. "So I went and showed about a minute clip of the Sac State game of them beating us . . . you know they say, 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' I think that might have been worth a million words. That's all I needed to say."

Or in this case, show.

Continued MacIntyre: "I think it's true in anything you do in life. You have to take care of yourself, you have to take care of us. What that means is you can't worry about if you are playing someone everyone thinks is a great opponent or everyone thinks is a poor opponent. You have to take care of yourself, number one: individually. Number two: as a team. You have to focus on what you need to do to execute.

"That goes with any business . . . with anything that anybody says about you. If somebody has a good opinion about you or a bad opinion about you, you can't let it bother you. You have to go do what you need to do in order to be successful. That's one thing we're teaching them."

Given the late-game trials and close losses the Buffs absorbed in their two-win 2014 season and their back-to-back wins this season, Liufau said maintaining the proper focus this week and not peeking toward the Ducks wouldn't be difficult.

"I don't think it's hard," he said. "Coming from this team where each week last year was a dog fight no matter who we played, you have to respect each opponent that you come up against each week."

Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU