And I know they (CSU) always get jacked up and want to come down here and beat us. We know we're going to get their best effort, so we've got to play hard. And personally, just growing up in Colorado, it's been a pleasure to be a part of it now for the last three years. Hopefully, we'll come out with a victory.

I'm definitely preparing myself to go out there and take all of the snaps on Saturday.

It was hard for me to see coach Barnett trashed like that in the national media. Anyone who's actually gone and talked to him or had the chance to sit in one of our meetings where he blasts us about our behavior and doing the right thing knows he's not like that.

It's not something that I wanted to hear, but I am going to go with whatever the doctors and trainers say first. The timing of it is such that I haven't been able to practice and so the coaches have to do what's best for the team.

Absolutely. I put a lot of things on my shoulders, especially after losses. Going out your senior year with the coach leaving, it's a hard pill to swallow. Coach Barnett would kill me for saying that, but it's just the way I feel about things.

As a senior, it's been exciting because I would love for this team to start a legacy, another streak in the polls. And hopefully people point to this week as being that week.

Team-wise, it's such an important game for us because we know how well CSU plays against us,

The same guys being in the flow of the action, being game fresh. . . . It's little things like that that I believe will help us. But it also goes a lot of layers deep, guys being a year older, guys practicing more, everybody concentrating more.

We crossed our 40, and at that point, I feel our percentages go up a ton because of Mason. We've got tremendous confidence in him.

We just stuck together and decided to fight our way through, put our heads down ... way back two springs ago. I think that has carried on all the way through. Last year's seniors taught this team how to work hard, how to not worry about what's going on around them, (to) just focus on internal issues.