FORT COLLINS – No excuses. No crediting the effort. Colorado State got its fanny kicked against Hawaii on national television and not once after the game did coach Mike Bobo say, “but look how close we were to a comeback!”
Down by 30 points late in the third quarter, CSU rallied within 6 before inevitably falling 43-34. Credit Bobo for his response to that: Big whoop.
The Rams stunk Saturday worse than the stench of slaughtered cow in Greeley on a day the wind is blowing west. K.J. Carta-Samuels passes for a school-record 537 yards. Cool. Preston Williams and Bisi Johnson combined for 345 yards and four touchdowns receiving. Cool. This team was bad, allowing 617 yards and being docked for 120 more on 12 penalties, and Bobo knows.
“Disappointing effort tonight, and discipline,” Bobo said, “and that falls on me as the head coach. We have to play more disciplined football. … We didn’t quit in the end, but there are no moral victories.
“… Anything that (Hawaii) did worked. We had no pressure on the quarterback. The couple times we got pressure, we weren’t able to get a sack and get him down; he was able to break contain,” Bobo said. “The quarterback counter, we had no answer all night.”
Moments before their comeback began, TV screens across the country showed Bobo — coaching the game from the booth rather than sideline after spending more than a week in the hospital with numbness in his feet – sitting with his chin flat against the palm of his hand, fingers curled, looking as depressed and perplexed as he was in January watching Georgia lose the national championship game.
Can’t blame him. No one saw this coming. The Rams entered Saturday favored by 17 at home against a team that hasn’t had a winning record since Bill Ritter was governor, and exited with the grueling reality of whatap next: Colorado, Arkansas and a $2 million game at Florida.
Hawaii was supposed to be the gimme. One win before what appears destined to be a three-game losing streak against the Power 5. The Rams are looking down the barrel at three programs of higher caliber than anything else they’ll see all season. CSU’s odds?
Gulp.
“For coaches, itap pretty easy (to stay focused),” Bobo said. “The hard part is your players, sometimes, and the media sometimes wants to talk about, ‘Hey, they got these three tough games, whatap going to happen?’ And you ask the players the question, so itap our job as coaches to constantly remind them that the only thing we got to focus on is this week.
“Everybody wants to talk about ‘whatap next?’ You have this game, then you have Arkansas, then you’ve got Florida. You want to talk about must-win and all that crap, but the only thing we must do is we got to show up and we got to go to work tomorrow.”
Guilty. But Colorado is next. Then Arkansas. Then Florida. CSU has finished the season 7-6 for three straight years and has made five consecutive bowl berths. Whatap next matters. What we witnessed Saturday doesn’t begin to suggest this team is capable of climbing out of an 0-4 hole.
Bobo wouldn’t blame his 10-day absence for CSU’s performance issues, brushing that off as an easy excuse. The Rams better hope itap at fault, otherwise, concern shouldn’t be whatap next, but whatap left?
A conference championship? Ha.
A bowl? Um.
Colorado State’s season looks dead on arrival.