The Rocky Mountain Showdown Stunner
filed in Post-game on Sep.06, 2004
I was unable to come up with a good post-game report yesterday due to the fact that I was still in shock that we won the game. If you’re reading this site then you’ve probably already read all of the game recaps. I’ll just list a few points that stick out to me from the game.
Before the season is over, we may see Mason Crosby hit a field goal from over 60 yards. I can’t believe how much distance he had to spare on that 55 yarder.
I thought the crowd at the game was great. For all of the talk about waning ticket sales and all of the attention on the recruiting “scandals”, the crowd was one of the best we’ve had in years. Much of that praise goes to the students. I walked into the stadium right at kickoff and the students section looked full. It’s nice to see the students not waiting until the 2nd or 3rd quarter to show up. Hopefully they’ll keep it up over the rest of the season.
I think you can view that game in one of two ways. The first, and easiest, is that we’re just lucky and we’re not going to be very good. We struggled on both sides of the ball and the seconday looked like a carbon copy of the one that got schooled all of last season. However, I choose to look at it this way: good teams are usually the lucky teams. A good example of this is LSU on Saturday, which needed the Oregon State kicker to miss three extra points to win. Nobody is going to claim the LSU is a bad team, they just struggled and got lucky.
CU definately struggled on Saturday night, and Coach Hank has some serious work to do this week. Klatt needs to do a better job of hitting his receivers, but that will come as they get more familiar with each other. Purify just needs to keep being Purify and run through and around everyone. Overall, I’m happy for the win, but still a little unsure about the forcast for the season. Washington State will be a great test to see if we’ve fixed what needs to be fixed. Go Buffs!
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September 6th, 2004 on 10:42 pm
AWESOME GAME!! We had a blast, got to be really close to the action, even if we had to sit in the middle of a bunch of Rams fans. Got to go out on the field and see players, coaches and fans after the game. It was an overall great experience. I’ve been wanting to see a game in Boulder since I was 5, so it was a pretty amazing day for me. Props to the CU fans, I didn’t know there was anyone as loud as me. Got some great pictures, I can send them if anyone is interested. Can anyone tell me where I might be able to find one of the t-shirts that said “Ram This” and had Ralphie humping a Ram?!!? Thought it was great. Hopefully everyone had as much fun as my wife and I did!!
September 8th, 2004 on 12:26 pm
After watching the game again. I think that we fell flat in the second half, but by no means do I think we were dominated. OUr secondary gave up big yards, but not because of missed tackles. This is a huge step for our secondary. And if you take away 3 huge penalties the game is still 17-3 deep into the 4th quarter. That all being said, we need to work on playing the full game.
September 8th, 2004 on 12:55 pm
I agree. I rewatched the game last night and couldn’t find a specific reason for the turnaround in the game. I think it was a combination of a couple of things.
1. Penalties – we killed ourselves again with these. Gary needs to do something about this.
2. Offensive inactivity – The offense was off the field for around an hour including halftime. You could tell they were flat when they came back out.
3. Missed assignments – There were a few times when you could tell that the secondary missed assignments (including the TD right before half). Hopefully this gets fixed with experience.
4. Great play by CSU – You have to hand it to their coaches and players. They had a good game plan and executed well. Holland is a fantastic passer and had all day to throw (I guess that should be point #5).
I’ll even come out and say that I was impressed by Shawn Watson’s game plan. He mixed it up but still seemed to stay with what was working. Overall, a decent effort for the first game of the season.
September 9th, 2004 on 2:37 pm
Did you say that you were impressed with Watson’s game plan? Perhaps you have a fever. Please seek medical attention.