Colorado trailed No. 14 Houston 20-7 with less than two minutes left in the first half on Friday night. Then the Buffaloes scored 28 points in a row. Deion Sanders’ team beat the Cougars 42-32 at Folsom Field in Boulder on November 13, giving Colorado its first win over an AP top-15 opponent since 2007. According to a game report, the last one came against No. 3 Oklahoma on September 29, 2007, and fans poured onto the field to celebrate this one.
“We played against a very outstanding team,” Sanders, known as Coach Prime, said afterward. “I’m thankful we’re able to come out of there with a victory.”
Two touchdowns in the last two minutes of the half
For most of the first 28 minutes, this looked like the upset would go the other way. Houston opened with a 27-yard field goal and a Makhi Hughes touchdown run for a 10-0 lead, answered Richard Young’s long touchdown run with a Conner Weigman scoring pass to Amare Thomas, and added a 52-yard field goal to go up 20-7.
The swing came fast. DeKalon Taylor took a pitch 67 yards for a touchdown with 1:49 left before halftime. After a defensive stop and a 34-yard punt return by DeAndre Moore Jr., JaQuail Smith broke a 32-yard run to put Colorado ahead 21-20 at the break. By the school’s count, the Buffs ran for 161 yards in that half, the most in any half of the Sanders era.
The second half started with an interception of Isaac Wilson, but safety Randon Fontenette knocked the ball loose from Weigman on a sack and defensive tackle Santana Hopper recovered. Wilson then found Joseph Williams on a short pass that Williams turned into a long touchdown, and when Wilson was briefly hurt in the red zone, freshman Kaneal Sweetwyne scrambled 14 yards for a score on his first snap. That made it 35-20.
Houston got within 35-26, but Young’s two-yard run with 3:59 left sealed it. The Cougars scored again late and failed on a second straight two-point try.
The numbers behind the upset
- Colorado: 466 total yards, including 249 rushing; Houston: 477 total yards
- Five Colorado rushing touchdowns, scored by five different players across the night (Young twice)
- 225 yards in the second quarter alone; the school says Colorado had not gained more in one quarter against an FBS team since putting up 258 on Nebraska in 2018
- Four touchdowns of 30 or more yards, only the fifth such game in program history and the first since 2007
- Two Houston turnovers, a Fontenette forced fumble and a Boo Carter interception
The strangest stat is the one that matters least. Houston actually outgained Colorado by 11 yards, yet lost by ten. Big plays did the work: the Buffs’ four scores from 30-plus yards covered roughly 190 of their 466 yards, about two-fifths of the offense on just four snaps.
Williams also reached 100 career catches at Colorado with five receptions for 80 yards. “Everybody’s counting us out when they say we can’t win two games in a row to make a bowl game,” he said. “But why can’t we?”
What it means next
The win lifted Colorado to 4-6 and 2-5 in the Big 12, so the Buffs need to win both remaining games to reach bowl eligibility. For more weekend football, see our story on Kurt Warner’s appeal for his undrafted quarterback son, our look back at Pudge Heffelfinger, the first paid pro football player, or browse the Sports section.
The next test is on the road: Colorado plays at Cincinnati on Saturday, November 21, with kickoff set for 10 a.m. Mountain Time.
Further reading
Image: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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