‘It’s hard to win’: Phrase Boise State’s coach harps on rings true in game at Wyoming
Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson has a whole suitcase of phrases and terms he uses when talking to his team.
“Built different” is a quick and easy one, as is “our best is enough, but your best is required.” There’s also “you are the hunter, not the hunted.”
“It’s mind-numbing sometimes,” Danielson joked with reporters earlier this week.
There’s one quote above all else that Danielson loves: “The next game is the most important one.”
Danielson got it from legendary Boise State coach Chris Petersen, and he’ll use it weekly in press conferences, radio interviews, before games and after games. And, of course, he repeats it in the Boise State locker room and on the field.
It’s a simple quote, but it’s effective. In the wild world of college football — there were five upsets of Top 25 teams Saturday — it has clear underlying meanings. Don’t take anyone for granted. Opponents can’t be overlooked. You can’t just walk out there and expect to win.
The approach has helped Boise State to a potential first-round bye in the College Football Playoff, and on Saturday night in Laramie, Wyoming, it was clear how true the mantra is, as the Broncos ground out one of their toughest wins to date — against a struggling team that was a 23-point underdog.
No. 12 Boise State (10-1, 7-0 Mountain West) used a fourth-quarter touchdown to post a 17-13 win on Saturday night at Wyoming (2-9, 2-5). The Broncos clinched a spot in the Mountain West championship game and will host that game, against either UNLV or Colorado State.
But it almost didn’t happen. A team with only a pair of wins, one in late September and one on Nov. 2, nearly took a big bite out of Boise State’s season.
“We had to come out and play a team that wasn’t quite on our level,” redshirt senior receiver Latrell Caples said. “But they stuck around and continued to fight throughout the game, and that goes to show how important this game was.”
The Broncos trailed 13-10 in the fourth quarter and had scored just three points across a seven-drive stretch before junior running back Ashton Jeanty led Boise State on a 75-yard game-winning drive.
BSU leads the series against Wyoming by a lopsided 19-1 margin, but games in Laramie are almost never fun. In recent years at War Memorial Stadium — the highest Division I stadium in America, at 7,220 feet above sea level— the Broncos have endured multiple close games: a 20-17 victory in 2022 and a 17-9 win in 2020, for instance.
In 2016, the Cowboys and Josh Allen, the Buffalo Bills’ star quarterback, got their sole win over the Broncos in a 30-28 game.
“It’s just so different here,” said Caples, who finished the game with 51 yards on three catches. “Being able to come out here and have that focus, because it’s a different atmosphere ... from the altitude, from the fans — they have really good fans here. They rock with their team.”
Danielson has repeatedly called November the “compete month,” saying that records don’t really matter because teams are playing for survival, pride or just to ruin another team’s season. That’s exactly what Wyoming was playing for Saturday evening.
The Broncos remained in great shape in the expanded College Football Playoff picture with their comeback win. In last week’s rankings and look at the bracket, they had jumped all the Big 12 teams and earned a first-round bye, slotting into the No. 4 seed. The four highest-ranked conference champs get those byes.
After Saturday’s results, that position was solidified. The two teams atop the Big 12 standings, No. 14 BYU and No. 16 Colorado, both lost, turning that race into a logjam. No. 19 Army of the American Athletic Conference, which was the highest-ranked Group of Five member after Boise State, was routed 49-14 by Notre Dame.
Other teams ahead of Boise State in the CFP rankings, such as No. 7 Alabama and No. 9 Ole Miss, also lost, likely taking them out of the race for at-large playoff bids.
“College football is crazy now,” redshirt junior safety Zion Washington said.
“It’s hard to win. College football is a grind. That’s why we’re so blessed to be able to capitalize when we can, because we know how important they are, and we know the feeling of how it is to lose close. We don’t ever want to have that feeling again.”
