Colorado still recovering from Texas

By The Associated Press Oct 22, 2005

Thomas Terry/AP Photo

Colorado's Joel Klatt unloads a pass in the second half of the Buffs' 42-17 loss to Texas last week.

Boulder, Colo. ? The first 15 plays of the game netted seven Colorado mistakes and seven Texas points. Bad start.

The rest of the afternoon was a thorough dismantling that resulted in a 42-17 loss to the No. 2 Longhorns. Bad finish.

The Buffs, despite a promising start to their season, learned emphatically that they weren’t ready to play with the big boys of college football last Saturday. So next, they go about trying to win the Big 12 North, a conquerable challenge that would likely set them up with a rematch against Texas. Bad idea.

“They’re really good. They played really well,” coach Gary Barnett said Tuesday. “We might be good, but we didn’t play very well.”

With half the season gone, one thing is for sure: There’s no doubt that the Buffaloes (4-2, 2-1 Big 12) are good when it comes to taking care of teams not as good as them. In their four wins, they have outscored the opposition 145-48 and outgained them by nearly 700 yards.

Erich Schlegel/AP Photo

Texas Quarterback Vince Young scores against Colorado linebacker Jordon Dizon (44) and defensive end Walter Boye-Doe (33) last week. Texas won, 42-17, sending Colorado back to reality after cruising to victories in its first two Big 12 Conference games.

They have put the games away early, have dominated those opponents throughout and have never been caught looking ahead to the bigger challenges in front of them — i.e., games like Texas.

Those are the kind of numbers and trends that point to a veteran team ready to make the next step and move among the game’s big players. But a 23-3 loss to Miami in September combined with the latest debacle against Texas have proven that the Buffs aren’t quite there yet.

Barnett said the loss to Miami wasn’t as discouraging, mainly because the Buffs gave themselves chances but consistently short-circuited their own opportunities; they committed 18 penalties that day.

The coach didn’t share nearly the same feeling about the latest loss, which ended Colorado’s stay in the AP Top 25 after only one week.

He pointed out the seven defensive mistakes CU made on Texas’ opening drive — missed assignments, blown tackles, missed reads. He said he couldn’t pinpoint the reason for the mistakes — maybe some nervousness was involved — but said the results of those mistakes were predictable.

“You don’t give yourself a chance when those kind of things happen,” he said. “It was a completely different team than the team that was out there the week before. We have to decide which one of those teams we are.”

Fortunately for CU, the finding out will all come against teams from their division, the mediocre Big 12 North, beginning Saturday at home against Kansas University.

Win them all and Colorado will head back to the Big 12 title game for the fourth time in five years. Last season, the trip resulted in a 42-3 loss to Oklahoma. Given that, and last week’s game, nobody is in a hurry to look too far ahead.

“It’d be one thing to have gone into Texas and played well and not won. Then you’d want another chance,” Barnett said. “But at this point, we’re just trying to re-gather ourselves and start the march to even put ourselves in that position. We’ve got to be a better team.”