Utah, Colorado Struggling in Pac-12 at LinesMaker

Utah, Colorado Struggling in Pac-12

PHOENIX —Utah left the Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence behind, hop­ing a switch to the Pac-12 would give the pro­gram a chance to move beyond its BCS-buster status.

Col­orado left behind the Big 12, fig­ur­ing the style of the West Coast con­fer­ence would be a bet­ter fit.

So far, it hasn’t gone well.

Near­ing the mid­point of their first sea­son in the Pac-12, the Buf­faloes and Utes are both win­less in the recon­fig­ured con­fer­ence and search­ing for answers that may take a while to find.

“We’re off, but it’s just a lit­tle bit,” Utah coach Kyle Whit­ting­ham said Tues­day. “Every­one in this con­fer­ence is a lit­tle bit big­ger, a lit­tle bit fast and a lit­tle bit stronger than the pre­vi­ous con­fer­ence we were in.”

The size and speed isn’t much of a change for Colorado.

In the Big 12, the Buf­faloes faced mam­moth line­men, gun-slinging quar­ter­backs and tal­ented skill play­ers pretty much every week. Of course, Col­orado didn’t exactly fare well against those teams. Since 2006, when Dan Hawkins took over as head coach, the Buf­faloes have failed to reach a win­ning record; the best they could do was a 6–7 fin­ish in 2007.

It hasn’t got­ten a whole lot bet­ter for Col­orado in its first sea­son in a new con­fer­ence and under coach Jon Embree.

The Buf­faloes are just 1–5, their only win over rival Col­orado State of the Moun­tain West. Col­orado still hasn’t won a road game, extend­ing its away-from-Boulder skid to a school-record 19 games, and has yet to beat a team in its new league.

The Buf­faloes had a chance to beat Cal­i­for­nia in the sec­ond game of the season—a pre­vi­ously sched­uled non­con­fer­ence game—before falling 36–33 in over­time and fol­lowed that by blow­ing a 10-point lead in the final 3 min­utes in a loss to Wash­ing­ton State. Col­orado never stood a chance in its lat­est game, a 48–7 blowout at No. 7 Stan­ford on Sat­ur­day that had Embree chew­ing the team out.

The Buf­faloes are 11th in the Pac-12 in total offense, mid­dle of the pack on defense and try­ing to find a way not to get discouraged.

“I feel like they’re deal­ing with it well,” Embree said. “It’s still impor­tant to them to play and try to win, and it’s still impor­tant to them to com­pete and try to find a way to try and build what we’re try­ing to do here.”

The orig­i­nal BCS buster, Utah, was sup­posed to be one of the three teams to beat in the Pac-12 South, with Ari­zona State and USC. Instead, the Utes are just above Ari­zona at the bot­tom of the divi­sion, 2–3 over­all and win­less in three con­fer­ence games.

Utah has the conference’s worst offense in terms of total yards, which doesn’t fig­ure to get much bet­ter with quar­ter­back Jor­dan Wynn out for the sea­son because of a shoul­der injury. The Utes also have had trou­ble hold­ing onto the ball, turn­ing it over 10 times the past two games and a Pac-12-high 13 overall.

Utah had kept games close early in the sea­son but may have had its worst game last Sat­ur­day, turn­ing it over five times as No. 22 Ari­zona State turned a close game into a rout. The Utes, on the heels of their first three-game con­fer­ence los­ing streak since 2002, held a players-only meet­ing after the loss to the Sun Dev­ils in an effort to get them­selves straight­ened out.

“It’s not a time to panic or feel sorry for your­self,” Utah offen­sive line­man Tony Bergstrom said. “It’s one of those things where you dug your­self into a hole and got to dig your­self out. It’s some­thing that’s just going to require more work and atten­tion to detail.”

Col­orado needs to do the same thing or it’s going to be an even longer sea­son for the Pac-12′s two newest teams.

Sports Writer Lynn DeBruin in Salt Lake City con­tributed to this story.

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