BOULDER — The pass bounced to the grass, and Will Sheppard threw up his hands in disbelief. Then Folsom Field let the boos rip.
CU did not get a pass interference flag on its last offensive play in a 31-28 defeat to Kansas State, a call which would’ve extended the Buffs’ final drive and perhaps led to another dramatic Big 12 win in Boulder.
“It looked like it was pass interference to me,” CU head coach Deion Sanders said. “It was tough. I didn’t want to end (the game) that way. I just know we were fighting down the field, and once we crossed the 50, it was (kicker Alejandro) Mata time. So I felt like we were going to be okay.”
Facing a three-point deficit on fourth-and-5 from their own 30-yard line with 1:21 remaining, Buffs QB Shedeur Sanders heaved the ball downfield to Sheppard, who was streaking down the right sideline into Wildcats territory.
Sheppard had a step on KSU’s Keenan Garber, who had his right arm wrapped around the wideout’s back as the pass came in, and the cornerback was partially looking back but did not fully turn his body to contest the football. There was also contact between the players as the pass came down.
The no-call prompted Wildcats QB Avery Johnson to get in Garber’s face, yelling in celebration, before Johnson led the KSU offense out onto the field for three knee-downs to end the game.
Coach Prime said his son Shedeur Sanders’ final pass, and the lack of flag that came with it, underscored a game in which the Buffs didn’t play their best but still had chances to win.
CU’s defense got run over in the run game as Kansas State ran wild for 238 yards, which allowed the Wildcats to control possession. The CU secondary had a big play — a long interception return by Colton Hood in the fourth quarter that set up the Buffs’ go-ahead TD at the 3:12 mark — only to allow the Wildcats to score on a 50-yard pass less than a minute later that was the result of busted coverage by Preston Hodge.
And the Buffs lost four wideouts to injury, including two-way star Travis Hunter in the first half.
So when the field judge working the sideline kept his flag in his pocket for that critical pass to Sheppard, which if completed would’ve given CU up in field goal range to tie the game, it made all those other Buffs deficiencies throughout the night all the more glaring.
“Sometimes when you lose, you go, ‘Dang, we should’ve won that. We should’ve had that,’” Deion Sanders said. “(Tonight) was one of those games… for us, we felt like we let that one slip away. And we have to do a better job of taking advantage of opportunities we had to win the game, because we had several.”
Besides that final pass and an interception deep in KSU territory early in the fourth quarter that came on an airmailed throw, Buffs QB Shedeur Sanders turned in a terrific night. He finished 34 of 40 for 388 yards with three touchdowns and a 186.2 rating. But he was also sacked six times for a loss of 74 yards, and the CU offense turned one-dimensional in the second half.
No. 2, who said he played “aight” on Saturday, didn’t blame the referee for swallowing his whistle on the controversial no-call.
“Whatever the ref calls, he calls,” he said. “The call wasn’t pass interference, so it’s okay, we’ve got to move forward and assess what we did wrong and go into the next week (at Arizona) and fix those things.”
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