BOULDER — He danced with students.
He danced with his players.
Heck, Mel Tucker just might dance all the way to Salt Lake City.
“The shift in culture, and how we play football and how we go about our business, itap taking hold,” Tucker, CU’s first-year football coach, said after his Buffs held off Washington late Saturday night at Folsom Field, 20-14, moving to within one game of bowl eligibility with one regular-season tilt left.
“And they’re starting to figure it out. So we just have to continue to get better. And like I told them in the locker room, ‘I wish we had 10 more games with this team.’ But we don’t. We have one more. We’re going to prepare and make the most of it.”
The Buffs (5-6, 3-5 Pac-12) put together arguably their best overall game of the season, and certainly their best defensive performance, in their home finale.
CU knocked off the Huskies (6-5, 3-5), two-touchdown favorites, for the first time ever while both were members of the Pac-12, snapping a nine-game losing streak in the series.
The Buffs hadn’t beaten Washington anywhere since a 33-21 victory in the 1996 Holiday Bowl.
If Saturday was CU’s ‘A’ game — or A-minus, at worst — then the Buffs know they’ll probably have to bring it one more time on Saturday at No. 7 Utah (10-1, 7-1) with a bowl game, for the third season in a row, on the line in the final week of regular season.
“Yeah, it feels good,” said senior quarterback , who became the program’s leader in career touchdown passes (61) while throwing for 223 yards and running for 56 more. “But we can’t get lulled into a comfort zone of thinking that since we won the last two games, the season’s over and everything’s all right now. We’ve still got a game ahead of us at Utah and we know from experience, itap tough to play at Utah, so we’ve got bring our ‘A’ game.”
Arizona State tossed a wrench into the Pac-12’s College Football Playoff hopes by upsetting No. 6 Oregon on Saturday night, 31-28. The Buffs could do the same with a victory at Salt Lake, a pelt the program hasn’t nailed to the wall since November 2016.
CU finished with 5-7 records in 2017 and 2018. The five victories in Tucker’s inaugural season as the Buffs coach are the most for a CU boss in their debut campaign since Gary Barnettap 1999 squad finished 7-5.
And if Saturday was Buffs star Laviska Shenaultap farewell to Folsom Field, the junior wideout sure as heck made it a memorable one with 117 yards from scrimmage on 10 touches.
His nimble 39-yard touchdown catch with 1:37 left in the first half, a diving grab of a ball that caromed off of Washington defensive back Trent McDuffie, gave the Buffs their first double-digit lead of the night, at 12-0 before the extra point. The rainbow from Montez was the quarterback’s 61st touchdown pass at CU, making him the program’s all-time leader in the category.
The Buffs sealed the win, just as they did two weeks against Stanford, on the ground, closing out the game with an 11-play, 81-yard drive that allowed the hosts to keep the ball for the final 5:09. Tailback Alex Fontenot fumbled at the Buffs 18 on the third play, but backup CU quarterback Blake Stenstrom fell on the rock to preserve the possession.
Montez returned to the game and hit arguably the evening’s — and the month’s — biggest pass, a 27-yard toss to Dimitri Stanley on third-and-16. Fontenot redeemed himself down the stretch by picking up 27 hard yards on six more carries, including conversions on second-and-6 at the Washington 39 and on third-and-1 at the UW 20, to ice the victory.
After alternating between being dormant and contained for the game’s opening two quarters, the Huskies scored on their first drives of the third period and fourth period, respectively, on a pair of 75-yard jaunts.
All of which kept a reported — and cold — 44,618 in attendance at Folsom on edge for most of the contest. The Buffs’ home attendance for 2019 totaled 297,435, the most in a single season since CU drew 300,527 in 2009.
In the Buffs’ first six Pac-12 games, they surrendered a whopping 218 points. In their last eight quarters against Stanford and Washington, they’ve given up just 27.
The first half of Saturday night showcased the most dominant two defensive quarters of the first season of the Tucker Era, a snapshot of what he wants CU to look like once all the pieces are in place.
Over the game’s first 30 minutes, the Buffs outrushed the Huskies 128-10, and outgained them by a margin of 252-91. CU had the ball for 17:14 of the opening half hour and the Buffs were turnover free over that span.
The hosts were most successful when they kept it conservative and physical; Tucker’s only major strategic misstep in the opening quarter-and-a-half came at the start of the second period, when the coach elected to go for it on a fourth-and-4 at the UW 18-yard line with a 3-0 lead. CU’s go-to short-yardage play, a Wildcat direct snap to Shenault, was sniffed out and stopped a few feet short of the marker.
The Buffs, curiously, didn’t seem to miss leaving the points on the field, as they opened the evening picking right up where they left off against Stanford two weekends earlier: Pounding it on the ground offensively while getting after the opposing quarterback with a variety of blitzes and fronts.
And for the most part, just as it did against the Cardinal, both approaches paid off. At the start of the second quarter, Montez had piled up more yards on the ground (38) than through the air (14) thanks to a series of timely scrambles. The senior signal-caller showed excellent pocket awareness in the early going, stepping up to elude Washington pressure or simply tucking and taking off into acres of space whenever the Huskies brought the heat.
The Buffs’ defense, meanwhile, pinned its ears back and went after UW quarterback Jacob Eason, picking up five sacks and hurrying the junior on four other attempts to set the tone for a Senior Night that figures to get talked about for some time.