Buffaloes Leery Of Letdown Against Nicholls State
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — The Colorado Buffaloes don't have any bye weeks on their 13-game schedule. They do catch a breather Saturday against Nicholls State, though, before they dive into Pac-12 play.
The Colonels (0-2), of the Southland Conference, have lost 20 straight.
Of course, they thought they had a gimme against Sacramento State in 2012, too. The FCS-level Hornets left Folsom Field with a $460,000 paycheck and a 30-28 victory on a last-second field goal in what would turn out to be Jon Embree's last season as Colorado coach.
Some of Mike MacIntrye's upperclassmen encouraged him to show the team clips from that Sacramento State game, so he obliged.
"You know they say a picture is worth a thousand words? I think that might have been worth a million words," MacIntyre said. "That's all I needed to say. They, the young men who had played in that game, were the ones that brought it up for me to play it."
Safety Tedric Thompson said the lessons were hammered home in the short one-minute clip.
"You can't take any game for granted, especially us," Thompson said.
The film that caught Colorado QB Sefo Liufau's eye wasn't so much Sac State's but Nicholls State's.
"I think that they are still a good team despite their record," Liufau said. "They're going to be really fired up to come up here and play us. We have to come out and perform just like it's any other team. You can't take Nichols State lightly."
Some other things to look for when the Colonels visit Colorado:
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GROWTH SPURTS: The Buffaloes (2-1) didn't allow a sack or commit a turnover in their romp over UMass or their comeback against CSU. "We actually put away a team and then we actually came from behind and really had two opportunities to win the game and finish it off and did it," MacIntyre said. "Those were two things we did not do last year that we have done this year already. I think that shows that those young men are starting to completely believe in themselves and be able to play under pressure and finish under pressure."
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CHALLENGING COLONELS: Nicholls State QB Tuskani Figaro is athletic and has "a little bit of an option type look to him," MacIntyre said. "We've got to be sound defensively. We really hadn't had a team that's done that yet. Defensively, they're going to load the box on us; that's what they showed. I think we're going to need to be able to throw the football and take some shots down field."
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THREE STRAIGHT: The Buffaloes are looking for their first three-game winning streak since 2008, when they opened the season with wins over CSU, Eastern Washington and West Virginia. Diego Gonzalez's 32-yarder in overtime that beat CSU 27-24 last week gave MacIntyre a 7-2 record in non-league games at CU.
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LONG LOSING STREAK: Nicholls State, which lost 20-10 to Incarnate Word last week, hasn't won since Oct. 12, 2013, when the Colonels beat Northwestern State 33-21.
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BELTING BUFF: OK, this will happen even before the 11:31 a.m. MT kickoff. But Keith Miller, former Buffaloes fullback and current star with the New York Metropolitan Opera, will sing the national anthem.
By Arnie Stapleton, AP Sports Writer
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