Fort Collins – Colorado State fifth-year senior Justin Holland has waited a long time for any kind of recognition from his conference.
When he finally received the Mountain West offensive player of the week award Monday, it was strictly incidental to the joy of beating Wyoming on Saturday.
Holland threw for a career-high 419 yards, the third- highest amount in school history, and four touchdown passes. He leads the MWC in pass efficiency (161.5) and ranks 10th nationally.
Plagued by turnovers until his recent run of success, Holland said he has waited a long time for the passing game to click.
“The thing I’m most happy about is cutting down the turnovers,” he said. “It’s nice and everything, but beating Wyoming after all they (talked) feels even better.”
Besides the usual exchange of words between the schools in media reports leading up to the game, Holland said, “There was more jawing in that game than even the Colorado game.”
He thought either Wyoming’s Jovon Bouknight or teammate David Anderson was more deserving of the MWC honor.
CSU coach Sonny Lubick said his biggest priority for Holland is “just managing the team into the end zone.”
Joey Rucks took the special teams player-of-the-week honor with four tackles and a fumble recovery. Rucks, who challenged briefly in preseason camp for a starting cornerback spot, moved into full-time special teams duty after the Minnesota game.
CSU is 4-3 overall, 3-1 in the league, and plays at New Mexico on Friday. If CSU beats the Lobos, the CSU-TCU game on Nov. 5 in Fort Worth will determine the conference lead with two weeks to go, regardless of what TCU (7-1, 5-0) does at San Diego State this week. The CSU-TCU game will start at 5 p.m. MST.
Injury update
Injuries on defense are creating serious depth issues. Senior linebacker Jahmal Hall’s career is likely over because of upcoming knee surgery. He has battled injuries for most of his career and re-injured his knee on the first play of the Wyoming game. His backup, John Nichols, who missed last week with a shoulder problem, will also miss the rest of the season, with surgery scheduled. Jon Radford, who played most of Saturday’s game, will get his first start at linebacker. Nathan Pauly is the only experienced linebacker in reserve. Lubick said he might use freshman Sedric Patterson, which would cost him his redshirt year.
The only backup at safety is true freshman Klint Kubiak, who recovered a late fumble against Wyoming. Backup Lukas Davis is out after knee surgery. Three-year starter Ben Stratton was lost in preseason camp to knee surgery. On the defensive line, it could be another week for starting tackle Delroy Parke to return from arthroscopic knee surgery.
Natalie Meisler can be reached at 303-820-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com.
