FORT COLLINS — To a certain extent, Anthoney Hill has lived this before.
As a junior at Colorado State in 1993, the first season under new coach Sonny Lubick, the Rams got out to a 2-6 start before things started to change. They won the last three, most important a 41-21 beatdown of Wyoming. That win proved to be a springboard to a solid offseason, which led to a special 1994 season in which the team won at Arizona, finished 10-2 and won the Western Athletic Conference.
Now CSU’s tight ends coach, Hill told that story to the team this week “so we can get things going,” freshman quarterback Garrett Grayson said.
CSU has a well-documented seven-game losing streak headed into its season finale Saturday against the archrival Cowboys.
And in a weird way, as disappointing as things have been this season, a win over Wyoming would go a long way toward healing the team’s ills and provide a good start to offseason conditioning for those returning next year.
“It’s definitely a lot of significance,” sophomore running back Chris Nwoke said. “It’s a lot of momentum. If we can get the ‘W,’ it would give the team a lot of confidence because Wyoming is a pretty good team this year. That’s going to be big for the young guys, just knowing that we can go into these rivalry games and be successful.
“Momentum goes a long way. If you can win a big rivalry game, it puts the whole team’s morale at a good level. If we can do that, it would accomplish a lot for the offseason, people working hard, having something to prove next year, coming out with a chip on our shoulder.”
In fact, it is the same formula Wyoming used to jump-start this season.
The Cowboys were 2-9 and had lost six in a row last year going into its contest against CSU. They thrashed the Rams 44-0, a win coach Dave Christensen credits for their successful start to this season. Wyoming enters this game at a bowl-eligible 7-4 (4-2 Mountain West), looking for its first eight-win season since 1997.
“Well, I think it was huge in setting the attitude of our football team going into the offseason,” Christensen said. “It had been a struggle for most of that season a year ago. And it was big momentum going into the offseason for us. And we were able to go on a three-game win streak after that, starting the next year. So I would say it was pretty significant.”
Rams coach Steve Fairchild took the concept further, wondering which players would step up the most in the offseason.
“Every team is different,” he said. “But if you’re talking about waking up in January and all of a sudden you don’t have a Myke Sisson out in front, you’re curious of who is going to step up. I think we’ve got a ton of good candidates in that regard and a lot of guys that have played a lot of football and played it the right way.”
But getting the victory is the first thing.
“It would be huge,” Grayson said. “That’s what we talked about the last three weeks, getting this bad taste out of our mouths and getting some momentum going into next year. . . . Coach Fairchild has done a heck of a job recruiting. So if we can just get something going and get this taste out of our mouth going into next year.”
Chris Dempsey: 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com
