The long drive to South Dakota will give the Colorado Mesa University football team some time to think about this upcoming game against Black Hills State and what their season now stands for.

CMU will, more than likely, not make the postseason. They will miss out on a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) title for the first time since 2014 and they are trying to keep their heads above the water in the RMAC.

The recent loss against CSU-Pueblo proved that CMU is not the team who they were in year’s past. This is not a terrible thing; seasons like this happen because that is the reality of collegiate football. Losing 22 seniors and key coaches really left the Mavericks in question if they could still perform at the same level they are used to being at.

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The potential in the future for this program is still very bright and it is a hard pill to swallow that every year is not meant to be a championship season.

With their record currently sitting at 4-3, the upcoming game tomorrow against a Black Hills State team–who recently won their first game of the season after starting 0-6–the ball is in CMU’s court. Every game from here on out is completely winnable and the Mavericks can still make this a successful year.

Success for Head Coach Russ Martin and his squad will not be identified by wins or championships this year.

“We’re not playing for championships, we’re not playing for playoffs, we’re playing for pride,” Martin said last week after the loss to CSU-Pueblo. “If you gotta have a championship out in front of you in order to motivate you to play well then you gotta question why you are playing the game.”

Now that Eystin Salum is back in the starting lineup, the offense should have a field day against a Yellow Jacket defense who ranks second to last in the RMAC. The Mavericks, statistically, should have no problem on Saturday finding the end zone nor will the defense have to worry about allowing many points.

Black Hills State averages only 133.6 yards per game rushing and 241.1 yards per game through the air. CMU’s defense has been showing signs of improvement in the last two weeks after holding CSU-Pueblo to only three points for the majority of the first half last Saturday and Fort Lewis to 24 points overall the week prior.

Despite the difference in the two teams this year, both the Mavericks and the Yellow Jackets own a win against each other in the last two years so Saturday will act more like a rubber match than anything.

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“We got guys who love playing the game of football,” Martin said. “They play for the right reason so we gotta accept that challenge. We gotta step up and we gotta play hard.”

The season is not lost and the Mavericks are not a bad football team. Losing three games in four weeks is never fun but the rest of the year can spell out four consecutive wins for CMU to close out the year strong.