Saturday was not a feel-good kind of day for anyone…well except for Colorado Mines.
The Orediggers came into Grand Junction and treated it like a casual business trip as they took care of a battered and beaten Colorado Mesa University football team in a 56-20 route. The Mavericks had a plethora of injuries on both sides of the ball and the experience of the Orediggersm mixed with a dominant front seven, allowed for an easy outing away from Golden.
“We got beat up front on both sides of the ball,” Head Coach Russ Martin said. “We were not able to run the ball with any kind of consistency…they were. They kept control of the game, we gave em some big plays and we had a lot of guys hurt.”
The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) came into Saturday undefeated averaging 42.3 points per game and had everything going for them on the offensive side of the ball. Running back Cameron Mayberry recently became the all-time leader in career rushing yards for Mines and had himself a career day against the Mavericks. The 5’5” 215-pound back stumbled for 192 yards and two touchdowns.
“It’s one thing that we definitely did not do very well making any good tackles,” Senior defensive end Mason Newton said. “Lots of arm tackles…lackadaisical. I think if we would’ve have stuck [Mayberry] we would’ve looked a little better but I don’t think we were all in it.”
Mayberry’s afternoon summarizes how dominant the Oredigger offense was. CMU was plagued by injuries in the linebacker core while the offense was without their primary weapons. Peter Anderson was out with a concussion, fellow receivers Isaac Salazer and Bradley Toussiant both went down in the first quarter and quarterback Hayden Bollinger started the game under center but was replaced after getting clocked in the dome.
“We just got beat,” Russ Martin said. “Even with some of our young guys, we had some mental mistakes, especially in some of the passing schemes. There were some times where we had some guys open and the guy wasn’t making the [necessary] break on the route.”
Mines got out an early 14-0 lead after Cameron Mayberry and freshman quarterback John Motacha found the endzone on the first two CSM drives of the game. CMU was unable to get past the 50-yard line until the second quarter. Aaron Howard coming into the game after Bollinger was removed due to injury limited the CMU offense and their run game because Howard was already dealing with an ankle injury from the week prior.
“The main thing was just taking it play by play,” Howard said. “We’ve been in those situations before especially with me. I know my ankle was hurting before this game so I just wanted to come in there and see if we can bring it back…we had a couple of drives, defense got a couple of stops but then they just kinda took away with it.”
The Orediggers put up an additional two scores before the Mavericks finally constructed their own touchdown drive capped by a 38-yard touchdown pass from Howard to Chris Brown. Howard threw three touchdowns on the day along with completing 12 out of 29 attempts for 146 and an interception that was returned for a touchdown.
The two teams would exchange a couple more touchdowns Mines would maintain a 42-14 lead going into halftime. The injuries at this point were a lot for the Mavericks to handle and the majority of the break was spent rewriting schemes trying to fit whatever guys were left into the empty holes.
In the third, the Maverick defense was able to to keep the Orediggers out of the endzone and was actually able to cut the lead back within three scores after an Isaac Maestas punt return set up a 35-yard CMU touchdown drive capped by a 1-yard completion from Howard to KJ Sapp in the back of the endzone. Ruiz-Diaz’s PAT ended up getting tipped and that would be it scoring-wise for CMU for the rest of the day.
CSM found the endzone twice more in the fourth quarter. Cameron Mayberry ended his day with a 54-yard dash to the goal line to bring him a few yards shy of the 200-yard mark. Mines put 293 yards total on the ground while the CMU offense was held to just 42 yards rushing. On the year, the Mines defense averages only 33.8 yards per game on the ground.
“We just gotta get better from it. Gotta learn and gotta grow,” Martin said. “This is behind us…but we gotta get healed up and healthy and we gotta get better. The getting healthy part is going to be a concern because we don’t have the depth some the other teams have.”
With the loss, CMU drops to 2-3 and it is the first time the Mavericks have lost three games within the first five weeks of the season since 2012. Next up on the schedule is Fort Lewis who is coming off a very sound win against Adams State who was second in the RMAC coming into Saturday. Last year, the Mavericks defeated the Skyhawks 31-24.
