If anyone had said back in August that the Colorado Buffaloes would have a 7-2 record, be atop the Pac-12 South and have a chance go to the Rose Bowl, they would have been laughed right out of Boulder.
Yet, here we are …
“We say it’s 24-seven, 365 to be a great college football player,” Colorado head coach Mike MacIntyre told Eric Goodman and Les Shapiro on Mile High Sports Radio’s Afternoon Drive last Friday. “And that entails everything. They’re doing that, they’re working at it, and … our leadership has been excellent”
The Buffs Pac-12 record is currently 5-1, which is miraculous within itself considering last year they earned just one win in conference play. Though the whole country is in awe of CU’s improvement, it has not been easy for Colorado to get there.
“To get where you wanna go, you got to win some ugly games,” Coach MacIntyre explained. “It can’t just fall in place, not everything always goes smooth. You find a way to do it. And when you’re able to do that, that’s when you have a magical kind of year, and we’re headed to have that kind of year.”
There is no denying the milestones of the Buffs’ last two games. First they beat Stanford for the first time this century, and now they’ve beaten UCLA for the first time in 13 years. Both of those games were critical for Boulder to keep their top spot in the Pac-12 South, which is why the games themselves are a little worrisome. Both games were loaded with penalties and resulted in extremely low scores for the teams. In fact, between both the Stanford and the UCLA game, only four touchdowns were scored in total.
“It was a tough night,” MacIntyre said when asked about Thursday night’s game. “But our kids played extremely hard, kept fighting, kept finding a way and the main thing is we got the W. And we will correct a lot of those things.”
CU has three games remaining before the Pac-12 Championship game in December: Arizona, Washington State and Utah. While Arizona should be a breeze, considering they’ve yet to win a Pac-12 game this season, Washington State and Utah could end up giving Colorado a run for their money.
Listen to the rest of MacIntyre’s interview, including the team’s punishment policy for penalties, below…
https://soundcloud.com/milehighsports/11-4-16-the-rise-is-real-coach-mike-macintyre-joins-eric-les-to-talk-about-last-nights-big-win
Catch Afternoon Drive with Goodman and Shapiro Monday-Friday from 4p-6p on Mile High Sports AM 1340 | FM 104.7 or stream live any time for the best local coverage of Colorado sports from Denver’s biggest sports talk lineup.
