It was exciting nonetheless, but it just didn’t end in the way that it seemed it should’ve.
After being down by 20 in the third quarter to eventually claw their way back to force overtime, the Colorado Mesa University football team couldn’t complete the comeback against Eastern New Mexico University. The Greyhounds were better than the Mavericks expected, however, Saturday also showed how good CMU can be if they truly want to be.
The 44-37 loss was left with a lot of hanging heads after they were momentarily picked up during the fourth quarter in Saturday’s home opener. The Mavericks got thwarted in the third quarter by turnovers and a lack of defense consistency and eventually found themselves down by 37-17.
“We got a good football team,” Head Coach Russ Martin said. “We can just not penalize ourselves with those kinds of turnovers at the point in the game. We can’t put our defense in that kind of a bind, especially against a team that wants to control the football.”
The Greyhounds surprised a lot of people with their triple-option offense that accumulated 561 yards of total offense and ran the ball a total of 71 times. It was a scheme that is not seen very often anymore in college football but it worked on Saturday.
“They had a couple big plays but that will happen with an option team,” Martin said. “All of a sudden that defensive guy just loses focus and a guy will slip out.”
Redshirt sophomore Aaron Howard got the first start of his collegiate career and almost had his second game-winning drive as the Arizona native had three touchdown passes along with going 21-33 for 188 yards and one INT. Howard was taken out of the game at the start of the second quarter to allow Hayden Bollinger to get his share under center as Head Coach Russ Martin made it known that he would be utilizing multiple quarterbacks in games.
“I made a few mistakes here and there that I know I gotta get better at,” Aaron Howard said. “I had a couple of drives so I wasn’t perfect.”
Bollinger performed exponentially well in Week 1 against South Dakota School of Mines as he threw for 294 yards and one touchdown but against ENMU, he didn’t replicate his magic from his debut. Bollinger would complete only three passes for 33 yards before getting taken out of the game after mishandling a handoff that resulted in the Greyhound defensive touchdown and then throwing an interception in the first drive of the second half.
That was the story of the game for CMU — turnovers that ended up turning into points for ENMU and it eventually proved to be too much to overcome. The Mavericks turned the ball over five times and stacked the odds against their defense a couple of times in the second half.
Some of the brighter spots to focus on is when the comeback was actually taking place. Howard led the offense on numerous scoring drives that resulted in touchdowns. One of those came via a 14-yard run by redshirt-freshman Jessee Rodriquez who made his collegiate debut on Saturday and ran the ball 16 times for 93 yards and the one score.
Isaac Maestas started the game but it was Rodriquez who led the CMU rushing attack. Howard worked well alongside three-time All-State Selection in the backfield and also found favor finding new targets downfield. Bradley Toussaint was one of them as Lake Worth native had seven receptions for 90 yards.
“I never had a doubt in my mind. I thought we were gonna win,” Jesse Rodriquez said. “But we just gotta get better, we’re a good group.”
Peter Anderson was defended rather well by the Greyhounds as they were aware of his abilities in which Howard was forced to find other options. He did find Anderson for the last Maverick touchdown that came in the fourth to tie it up 37 apiece.
Special teams also kept CMU in it until the very end as there was a blocked field goal as well at two punts that resulted in turnovers. However, it was a small detail on special teams that could’ve been the difference.
Lucas Ruiz-Diaz, the sophomore kicker who has won plenty of games for the Mavericks in the last year, missed a PAT that would’ve cut the lead down to 37-31 in the fourth, consequently, it was missed and the game went into overtime which ended in the loss
“We lost to a good football team tonight, and we did a lot to hurt ourselves,” Martin said. “This team is going to grow and we’re gonna get better. We got a lot of young guys out there and they’re gonna continue to grow as well.”
Despite the momentary heartbreak, it was not a total loss for CMU. Eastern New Mexico was a very sound football team with a lot of dangerous moving parts. Now the Mavericks have to prepare to defend their home turf yet again against Western Colorado University on Sept. 21 at 7 p.m.
