Boulder, Colorado- For the first time in quite awhile, the Colorado Buffaloes defeated the Colorado State Rams. It has been 10 years to be exact, with the Rams accumulating 15 wins against the Buffs in that time.<!--more--> Both teams had their backs up against the wall and needed to pull out the victory on Saturday to help out their cases for making the MCLA tournament. Colorado out-played Colorado State to earn the top seed in the RMLC tournament and put them in a better position to make a splash in the MCLA, while Colorado State falls to the third seed in the RMLC. “It was a disappointing night for us in a lot of ways,” noted Colorado State assistant coach Alex Smith. “Mostly was the fact that CU really outhustled us between the lines and won a lot of the little plays. We are the type of team that needs to capitalize on our opportunities and be gritty and we lost both of those aspects tonight.” Cooper Kehoe (Stevenson HS; CA) put the Rams on board first after a goal three minutes into the game, but that was a short-lived lead for the Rams as Kyle Driver scored a minute and a half later to tie up the game for the Buffs. Within five minutes Colorado scored two additional goals, one of which came from the games leading scorer in James Blackburn, to give the Buffs the lead from which they wouldn’t look back. Blackburn put four goals total in net and gathered two assists on the day. Each team was able to score once more in the quarter, but Colorado put the game even further out of reach by scoring three more times to Colorado State’s one in the second quarter. The second half continued on much the same, with the Ram’s only able to score once more in the game with the Buffs putting four more away before all was said and done. Colorado State had some good opportunities to score more goals than they did, but senior goalie Kevin Moriarty of Colorado played a great game and came up with 12 saves for the Buffs. “Their goalie played well when we did get looks, but in general we made far too many mistakes to win,” commented Smith. “We have to take more pride in the little things every single day to have a look at games against better teams.” This loss moves Colorado State’s record to 10-7 on the season, and marks their second disappointing season in a row after finishing 10-5 during the 2008 regular season. Colorado State will host Nebraska Sunday on campus before heading back to Boulder for a chance to redeem themselves against RMLC second seed Brigham Young, who the Rams lost to 6-9 the first time around. “Losing puts us at the 3 seed against BYU next Friday,” said Smith. “We played really well against them last time and I hope that we can put together a full effort against them this time. It really comes down to if we want it enough to take pride in simple stuff. We’ve been on a downward turn lately and it’s time to turn it around right now because if we don’t next weekend at the RMLC tournament it might be too late.”
top of page
bottom of page