Buffs stay believing after close loss to No. 11 Utah

The Colorado Buffaloes look to build upon a promising performance againts No. 11 Utah. (Photo by Cristian Blanco/Sko Buffs Sports)

Losses are hard, but the Colorado Buffaloes will take moral victories where they can. 

The Buffs had a chance to beat the No. 11 Utah Utes at home on the final play, but ended up losing 27-24. That’ll count as a moral victory in their book.

“Yeah, it raised our morale a little bit,” defensive tackle Dylan Manuel said during the team’s media availability. 

Colorado drops their fourth straight game, which includes No. 11 Texas Tech in week five and  Utah in week seven. Currently, Colorado isn’t favored in any of their remaining matches.

“Going toe-to-toe with two top teams in the country, that brings extra belief [when] it's kind of been flat the past weeks,” defensive back Randon Fontenette said. “Being in a fight in those games kind of gels us together.”

Even as the team comes together, Colorado has still struggled to piece together wins; their last win came over a month ago against Weber State. The belief has always been there, even if the wins aren’t.

“We've always had belief in the locker room,” Manuel said. “It's not going to change because we go out there and we have an opportunity to prove everyone else wrong.” 

Head coach Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders seemed to notice the hope in his team.

“We wish to God we could send them home with a smile on their face,” Sanders said after the game on Saturday, “But at least we send them home with a little hope.”

That hope translated and bled into how he approached his team in recent days.

“I definitely felt the shift with the way Coach Prime approached us,” Fontenette said. “It was definitely different, and I feel like in this moment that we're in, we definitely needed that as a team.”

With six games left on the schedule, the Buffs need to win four of them to be bowl eligible. Sticking together and working as a team helped them to keep both the games against Red Raiders and the Utes close.

“That really gelled us together and kind of brought us closer to each other because, I mean, we're 2-4,” Fontenette said. “It's easy to, you know, fall apart right now, so that really helped us gel together even more.”