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Rams show a lot of Hart against CU

CSU wins the Rocky Mountain Showdown by 14 points with a dominant run game

DENVER – Dee Hart always envisioned a game where he tore up the field as a standout in the backfield.

Only, he pictured it taking place in Tuscaloosa, Alabama – not Denver. And wearing a Crimson uniform, not white with green.

It doesn’t take away from the moment.

Hart, a transfer from Alabama, rushed for 139 yards and two touchdowns in his Colorado State debut to help the Rams rally for a 31-17 win over Colorado on Friday night.

“(Alabama) had a lot of great running backs,” said Hart, a graduate student who arrived at Colorado State’s doorstep this fall. “I wanted to go somewhere where I could show what I could do.”

He wasn’t the only one finding room to run. His teammate, Treyous Jarrells finished with 121 yards, giving the Rams two 100-yard running backs in a game for the first time since 1996.

“Me and Dee have been talking about this (a one-two punch) in camp,” Jarrells said. “We’re going to make it happen this year.”

After Colorado State trailed most of the game, Garrett Grayson put the Rams on top for good with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Rashard Higgins early in the fourth quarter. Hart extended the lead minutes later with a 3-yard rush, as the Rams beat the Buffs for a second time in three seasons.

Sefo Liufau threw for 241 yards and a pair of touchdowns to Nelson Spruce for Colorado.

Hart spent three seasons at Alabama, where he appeared in 17 games and carried the ball 43 times for 172 yards. He vaulted to the top of the depth chart as he quickly picked up the system of Colorado State head coach Jim McElwain, who served as the offensive coordinator of the Crimson Tide from 2008 to 2011.

“Coach Mac, he’s always been like a father figure to me,” Hart said.

Most of the week, McElwain played up the underdog angle, saying the Buffs were a Pac-12 team with more resources and more talent. But the Rams were the ones coming off a bowl win last season.

They struggled early on offense under the senior leadership of Grayson, who’s coming off a season in which he threw for a school-record 3,696 yards. With the passing attack stymied, Colorado State turned to its running game, as Hart and Jarrells battered and bounced off Buffalo defenders.

“We’re not skipping a beat from last year,” said Grayson, who was 13-of-23 for 134 yards.

Hart & Co. are trying to replace Kapri Bibbs, who rushed for 1,741 yards and 31 touchdowns last season.

“We just wanted to make a good first impression,” Hart said.

They did, and the young Colorado defense helped by missing tackle after tackle.

Early in the second half, all the momentum appeared to be with Colorado when Grayson fumbled, and Liufau capitalized by throwing his second touchown pass of the night to Spruce, who made a one-handed catch.

Soon after, Jarrells made it 17-14 on a 3-yard run, starting the Rams on the comeback trail.

“They started outworking us,” Liufau said. “If you want to win a football game, talent doesn’t always get you a win.”

Spruce is taking the place of electric receiver Paul Richardson, who was drafted by Super Bowl-champion Seattle. Spruce may not have Richardson’s blazing speed, but he has the ability to find space and catch about anything thrown to him. That’s why Liufau called Spruce his “safety blanket.”

It’s not like Spruce doesn’t have speed, though, as he showed when he deked Colorado State cornerback DeAndre Elliott at the line of scrimmage and hauled in a 54-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter.

That long play caught the attention of Richardson. He wrote on his Twitter account shortly after the play, “that young man is a baller.”

Former Olympic swimmer and Colorado State alum Amy Van Dyken-Rouen – along with her husband, former Colorado punter Tom Rouen – took part in the opening coin flip. Van Dyken recently was released from a Denver-area hospital to continue her rehabilitation after an all-terrain vehicle crash left her paralyzed just below the waist.



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