GAME AT A GLANCE
Matchup: Colorado Buffaloes (2-4, 0-3) at Oklahoma State Cowboys (4-2, 2-1)
Kickoff: Saturday, 5:00 p.m. MT, Boone Pickens Stadium, Stillwater, Okla.
TV: FS1
Radio: KOA 850 AM & 94.1 FM
Series: Colorado leads 25-20-1
Oklahoma State calls Saturday night “America’s Greatest Homecoming.” For dozens of Cowboys, it will be the first one.
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Colorado’s opponent this weekend was built much the way Deion Sanders has built the Buffaloes. First-year head coach Eric Morris remade the roster after replacing longtime coach Mike Gundy, and many of the newcomers followed him from North Texas.
Morris noticed. Asked Tuesday about Sanders’ approach to roster building, he said the situation “isn’t entirely new for me” because so many players came with him. What stood out was how much football its transfers have played.
“Colorado, their roster is old. They’ve got a lot of veteran players,” Morris said. “Now, they’ve come from different places, but similar to us, they’ve played a lot of football, and I think that shows up.”
Sanders, speaking at his own news conference Tuesday, said Morris “brought a ton of guys over with him.” Morris, he said, “cleaned out the house a little bit, and now got really what he wanted.”
CU Buffs football scouting report vs. Oklahoma State
Same kind of construction, different curb appeal so far.
Oklahoma State is 4-2 and 2-1 in the Big 12, one week removed from a 35-32 loss at No. 20 Houston that snapped a four-game winning streak. Colorado (2-4, 0-3) has lost four straight, most recently falling 27-24 to No. 11 Utah after trailing 13-0 at halftime. The Buffaloes are 13.5-point underdogs.
Safety Randon Fontenette came to Boulder by way of TCU and Vanderbilt. Asked what hanging with Texas Tech and Utah into the fourth quarter did for the defense, he said it brought “extra belief” after a flat stretch. He also sensed a shift after Sanders’ locker-room message following the Utah loss. At 2-4, he said, “it’s easy to, you know, fall apart right now,” and the message pulled the group together.
Defensive coordinator Chris Marve, asked about keeping finger-pointing out of the locker room, gave the players credit.
“It’s not my unit. It’s theirs.” Marve said. “We’ve got the right kids.”
Both teams have hit the snooze button lately. Oklahoma State trailed Tulsa, West Virginia and Houston at halftime. After the Houston game, Morris told reporters, “The slow start stuff has to stop.” Oklahoma State “preached it for a whole week” before that game, he said Tuesday, “and it happened again.” Asked whether he would do anything to fix it, he answered, “I’m taking suggestions.”
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Fixing the starts won’t matter much if Colorado can’t slow the quarterback. Drew Mestemaker followed Morris from North Texas, where he threw for more than 4,800 yards and 36 touchdowns across two seasons. The coaches who have faced him this season have talked about him like a future pro. West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez called him “an NFL quarterback” after Oklahoma State’s 41-24 win in Morgantown. Two weeks later, UCF’s Scott Frost said much the same after a 42-28 loss in Stillwater.
“I think their quarterback, I’d be surprised if he’s in college next year, some of the plays and throws that he made,” Frost said.
Sanders, asked Tuesday about Mestmaker, called him a “bona fide leader” and “one of the best in the conference as well as in college football, to me.” He also pushed back on the idea that Colorado is facing a running quarterback, saying “His best attribute is him throwing the football.”
Mestemaker has help. Marve, asked about the Cowboys’ skill players, called them “productive, smart” and said they are “really attacking the ball in the air.”
At Houston, Mestemaker threw for 365 yards and three touchdowns. He also had an interception and a lost fumble in the defeat. Morris called it “probably not his best performance” but said Mestemaker is “maybe the toughest kid on our team.”
The Cowboys will try to keep their newcomers focused through a week of homecoming events. Morris said he drove through campus Monday night to take in the buzz, and that the way to send everybody home happy is “us winning a game against a really good Colorado team.”
Somebody has to crash a homecoming. The Buffaloes would like for it to be them, with six games left to flip the script on their season. Fontenette said the Utah game left him believing they can.
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“I’m very confident in these next six games to win,” he said.
