The Lobo football team lost its season opener, which might make it easy to dismiss it as the team with no improvement from last year.

Not so fast, though — there were a lot of positives from
Saturday’s game.

Sophomore Linebacker Dallas Bollema, for example, led the team in tackles with 13.

“I felt like I played well,” he said, “but there are always corrections that we can work on and I just want to keep working on my techniques and getting better before every game.”

Head Coach Mike Locksley said Bollema’s strong performance didn’t surprise him at all.

“(Bollema) is a player who we have identified as probably one of the most complete players on our team. He’s only going to get better,” Locksley said.

He added that the defensive unit as a whole played well against Colorado State.

“I have to give the defense a tremendous amount of credit,” he said. “I thought they played hard, tackled well, and they ran to the ball. When we needed to get the ball back at the end of the game they gave us the opportunity.”

Bollema said he agreed with Locksley, and felt the defense played well enough to win the game.

“The defense felt good today,” he said. “We all came out today flying around pretty good, and the coaches had a good game plan for us, so we didn’t really see anything that we weren’t prepared for today. We were ready for what came at us and hopefully the defense will keep doing this all year.”

Bollema said the team needs to learn from Saturday’s mistakes and move past them.

“We knew this was going to be a big opener for us, and it was a little shot to the heart taking a loss, but we have to keep our heads up and keep driving because we have a big season ahead of us and there’s a lot more games to play,” he said.

Quarterback Tarean Austin said the team will press on to the next game against Arkansas on Sept. 10.

“It hurts, but we have to move on to next week,” he said.

The Lobo football team hasn’t won a season opener since 2005, against UNLV, but Bollema said the team is more optimistic than in past years.

“I feel like we are a better Lobo team this year, and we’re going to keep preparing on that,” he said.