EL PASO — Personnel decisions ranged from good to bad for Colorado State on Saturday.
The bad: CSU suspended senior defensive captain Ivory Herd for a violation of team rules. He did not make the trip and is suspended indefinitely. He had played in every game in his CSU career since his redshirt freshman season, 43 total, and had started 18 straight and 23 of the past 24 dating back to 2009.
Freshman Drew Reilly started in Herd’s place and recorded six tackles.
Meanwhile, the Rams reinstated freshman fullback Kivon Cartwright. Cartwright was the last of a trio of players suspended before the season — safety Ezra Thompson and wide receiver Byron Steele were the others — to be reinstated. Thompson and Steele were reinstated prior to the Utah State game Oct. 1.
Cartwright’s participation raised the number of Rams making their college debuts this season to 19.
A different RB split.
At least for one game, Colorado State scrapped its practice of switching running backs every other series and went to essentially splitting the carries by half. The first half went exclusively to sophomore Chris Nwoke, who took the lion’s share of the running back snaps. He ran fairly well, finishing with 93 yards, though he averaged just 4.0 yards per carry, and scored a TD.
Senior Raymond Carter, who had one carry for 6 yards in the first half, took over for much of the second half. He carried more and finished with 42 yards on nine attempts in the game, although Nwoke still played a role.
DeLine replaced?
Colorado State will have a decision to make regarding its place-kickers from here through the end of the season after replacing normal starter Ben DeLine after his first-quarter field goal was blocked.
DeLine’s kick, a 42-yard attempt, was low and was blocked, ending CSU’s opening points. The second time CSU attempted a field goal, senior Chad VanderMolen was the kicker. He made a 22-yard try and finished the rest of the game. DeLine did continue to handle kickoffs.
DeLine has been the regular kicker since 2009. He’s had 10 kicks blocked in his career.
Blotting out the Sun (Bowl).
Just as players were coming back out of the locker room at halftime, all of the lights at the Sun Bowl turned off. The band played on, but the players were taken back to the locker rooms. It took 25 minutes to get the lights back on and the game restarted.
The outage was due to a short circuit, UTEP officials said.
Footnotes.
Another good sign for healing LB Mychal Sisson, who is recovering from a broken ankle: He roamed the sideline without a boot Saturday night. . . . CB Momo Thomas’ pick-six in the first half was the first TD of his career. . . . Long snapper Tanner Hedstrom left the game in the third quarter with an injury. Wide receiver T.J. Borcky took over long-snapping duties.
