Aggies fall to Rams on last-second field goal, Garretson injured

FORT COLLINS, COLO. – Head coach Matt Wells said Saturday’s football game would go all 12 rounds, and he was right. Unfortunately for the Aggies, they were the ones on the losing end of the fight when Colorado State hit a 46-yard field goal as time expired to win the game.

“We knew it was going to be a slugfest,” Wells said. “Whether it was going to be high-scoring or low-scoring, it was going to go down to the wire and that is exactly what it did.”

The win was a big one for fans in Fort Collins. There were 32,546 of them in attendance, making it the first sellout in a decade. The Rams wanted revenge after being shutout last year in Logan. After the ball made its way through the goal posts, CSU students celebrated by rushing the field. The win gave USU its first conference loss.

“We’ve got a lot of teams with one loss,” Wells said. “We don’t control our own destiny anymore. We’ll see how it goes. It’s going to be game by game here for a while in the conference.”

The Aggies were faced with additional challenges during the first drive of the third quarter when quarterback Darell Garretson injured his arm and was replaced by Craig Harrison.

“I’m going to tell you what (Harrison) did is he came in and fought and battled and I thought he managed it pretty good in the second half,” Wells said.

After the game, it was still unclear how serious Garretson’s injury was.

“Looks like he’ll be down for probably next week I would assume,” Wells said. “We’ll see. We’ll evaluate him a little tomorrow and get him an X-ray on him and see right where he’s at.”

Colorado State forgot about last year’s shutout pretty quickly. A big 69-yard pass to star receiver Rashard Higgins on the first play from scrimmage set up running back Dee Hart for a quick touchdown, just 1:20 into the game.

The Aggies responded with 10 unanswered points in the quarter with a career-long 59-yard rushing touchdown by senior running back Joe Hill and a 25-yard field goal by Nick Diaz. Those 59 yards would be 59 of only 100 rushing yards they would get all game.

“It was inconsistent. It wasn’t there,” Hill said of the running game. “We had a couple big plays but I put in on the running backs. We could have made some better reads and offensive line made some mistakes. We have to build on that because it’s going to be a big key the next couple of games.”

The defenses continued to dominate through the rest of the half. USU was only able to come up with 19 offensive yards in the second quarter and didn’t produce a single first down. With 4:50 left in the first half, Colorado State hit a 52-yard field goal to tie the game up at 10.

After a scoreless third quarter, the Aggies took back the lead at the beginning of the fourth quarter with a 32-yard field goal by Nick Diaz. Colorado State matched it with a field goal of their own with just 1:50 left on the clock. After a failed drive and a punt by USU, CSU quarterback Garrett Grayson connected again with a deep ball to Higgins to set up the game-winning field goal.

“It’s a tough feeling because everyone is out there working hard,” junior defensive end Jordan Nielsen said. “They just made more plays than we did and there were plays out there that we could have made to keep us ahead, but we just didn’t make them.”

The Aggies continue Mountain West conference play in Logan on Saturday against UNLV.

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Posted in USU