FORT COLLINS — In a season of firsts under a new coaching staff, Saturday’s game is the first real road test for coach Jim McElwain’s Colorado State Rams.
It comes against a team, San Jose State, that might provide the Rams some extra motivation given the fact the Spartans rolled into Hughes Stadium a year ago and handed CSU a devastating loss. That loss was the beginning of nine in a row to end a third consecutive 3-9 campaign.
“This is the game that changed our season last year,” senior cornerback Momo Thomas said. “We just want to put a big emphasis on it. Just learn from last week, come in and be more prepared.”
But McElwain doesn’t believe there should be any thoughts of revenge.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “I think if you spend your life in revenge mode, uh-uh. If you spend your life in pursuit of excellence, now you’ve got something.”
And most of the players fall in line with the notion that last year’s loss to San Jose State won’t have any bearing on how they feel Saturday.
“You know, I’m not thinking as much revenge as coming back with a better week,” center Weston Richburg said. “Trying to be better not only as an offensive line as a unit, but as a team. That will be our biggest motivating factor, to come back and put a good game on tape.”
Still, some will draw some measure of inspiration knowing they get a chance to pin a home loss on the team that did the same to them a year ago.
“We still got that taste in our mouths like ‘I really want to beat them bad,’ ” cornerback Shaq Bell said. “They beat us on our home field, so now we’ve got the same opportunity to beat them on their home field.”
It was a difficult week for the Rams, whose priority was to simply have good practices this week after a lackluster performance that McElwain called a “pillow fight” in the home loss to North Dakota State. CSU finished with 243 yards of offense against the Bison, after getting 298 in the season-opening win against Colorado.
McElwain stressed this was “not the time to scream and yell,” but it was a time for his players to renew themselves in what he’s trying to install.
How CSU comes out and plays will determine if the Rams got the message.
“There was some hurt and there was some grieving, and there should have been,” McElwain said of how his team felt after its first loss of the season. “What caused that hurt, and what can I do to remedy that hurt?”
Oddsmakers don’t expect CSU to do much to remedy that hurt. The Rams have been a 10½- to 11-point underdog all week.
As for the road game providing more focus, no one in the program is buying it.
“We don’t pay attention to the crowd or anything like that,” Thomas said.
Said Bell: “We came out with a lot more energy (in practice) than last week. We just want to get better this week.”
Christopher Dempsey: 303-954-1279, cdempsey@denverpost.com or
