GOLDEN — The wildest ride in Colorado sports is a runaway ore cart, rolling out of the foothills, flattening everything in its path.
Hop in. Or get run over.
There are better football teams in our fair land than Colorado School of Mines. But you think there’s a more dominant squad than this little juggernaut?
Mess around and find out.
On a snow globe of a Saturday afternoon, the Augustana Vikings sauntered into Marv Kay Stadium, looking for trouble in the NCAA Division II playoffs.
Big mistake.
“They hadn’t seen anybody like us,” said Mines coach Pete Sterbick after an ore cart loaded with touchdowns and sack dances ran over Augustana 56-10 in a playoff game so lopsided it should’ve been played with a mercy rule, a running clock and participation ribbons for the losers.
While Orediggers quarterback John Matocha threw for 328 yards and three touchdowns, 6-foot-7 Casey Bauman, his Augustana counterpart, was felled like a big tree, going down hard with six sacks.
Mercy me.
At Mines, the Big Mo giving a tush push to this team is as strong as Blaster the Burro. In their quest for the first national championship in the football program’s history, the undefeated and top-ranked Orediggers are on a roll that could make the Alabama Crimson Tide envious.
I’ve covered football in this fine state for 40 years but never encountered an omigosh statistic like this: When the Vikings visiting from South Dakota finally got on the scoreboard early in the second quarter, their 24-yard field goal posing no real threat to the three touchdowns already posted by Mines, it ended a streak of 124 unanswered points by the Orediggers over the course of three games.
While hard to believe, it’s not a misprint: 124-0 during a span of 96 minutes, 57 seconds on the scoreboard.
Get the picture?
These point-a-minute Orediggers are capable of football engineering feats that can turn a team as huge as Augustana, with an offensive line whose average dude is 6-foot-4 and 303 pounds, into a big pile of regret.
Yes, the offensive fireworks of a team that has scored more than 50 points in half of its dozen games during the course of this season creates all the buzz. But can we please try to ignore those spectacular 12 receptions for 215 yards by Max McLeod on this Thanksgiving weekend for one stinking minute?
What gives MInes more than a fighting chance for the three more victories required to claim the national championship are helluva engineers on the defensive side of the ball, guys equally capable at solving quadratic equations and tackling in the open field.
“They don’t mess up,” marveled Augustana coach Jerry Olszewski, whose team didn’t find the end zone against the Orediggers until after halftime.
For those of you keeping score at home, that was the first touchdown the Mines defense had allowed since before Halloween.
While my math score on the SAT was not sufficient to impress anybody at Mines, if the counting on all my fingers and toes is correct, the Orediggers had denied recent foes the satisfaction of scoring a touchdown for a soul-sucking span of nearly 184 minutes until they finally allowed Augustana one, small reason to celebrate.
Playing quarterback against Mines is an invitation to pain that can linger long after the game ends. Do we really need to explain why?
“The physicality we preach on defense and the buzzing to the ball,” said Matocha, the most accomplished quarterback in Division II. “As an offensive guy, I hate going against our defense in practice. I watch them on the field and see some of the hits other quarterbacks take and I go: ‘Ooooh.’”
Next up for Mines: the quarterfinal round in the NCAA Division II football tournament, scheduled to be played next Saturday on their home field.
Next target of this runaway ore cart: Central Washington. The Wildcats beat Bemidji State 21-17 on the road to earn a trip to Golden.
Friendly advice to the Wildcats: Pack a lunch and plenty of aspirin. This is going to hurt.
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