Buffs drop first game of season in sweep to rival Rams
- Patrick Dawson
- Sep 18
- 2 min read
The Colorado Buffaloes (9-1) dropped their first game of the season to the Colorado State Rams (5-4) in the first of two matches against their in-state rival at Moby Arena in Fort Collins.
In all three sets, both teams looked evenly matched near the beginning. But around the midway mark, the Rams pulled away each time. The Rams took all three sets with scores of 25-21, 25-18, and 25-17.
The Buffs' defense was simply no match for the Rams' scoring attack, as they gave up a .210 hitting percentage while not being able to come close on their own end.
Offensively, Colorado was uncharacteristically sloppy. They could only manage a .080 hitting percentage and tallied five service errors. Ana Burliović led the team with 12 points, averaging four points per set, which is below her season average of 5.27.
Colorado was simply outplayed. Despite the aforementioned acceptable starts of each set, once the Rams started to pull away, Colorado was never able to stop the bleeding in time.
“I thought Colorado State played exceptionally well,” Colorado head coach Jesse Mahoney said. “They served and passed much better than we did, and they made a lot of defensive plays. Those are things we have been doing well this year– serving and passing and defense. We didn’t quite have it tonight.”
At 9-1, this season is still a sizeable improvement over Colorado’s 2024 campaign. Just 12 months ago, the Buffs were sitting at 6-4 and coming off some frustrating non-conference losses to the likes of Northern Colorado and Wyoming.
In both 2023 and 2024, the two-game CU versus CSU series was split, with each team winning on the road. The first game of 2025 ended that trend and put the Buffs’ backs against the wall as they hope to avoid suffering a sweep to their biggest rivals.
Colorado returns to Boulder for the second game of the series on Friday night. First serve is set for 6 p.m. MDT at the CU Events Center.
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