ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Another busted bowl game.

The third in as many seasons for CSU under coach Mike Bobo, who signed a three-year contract extension earlier in the week through the 2022 season.

The latest loss came in Saturday’s New Mexico Bowl, 31-28 to Marshall, a middle-of-the-pack team from Conference USA.

Despite making a game of it in the final minutes, the Rams (7-6) looked every bit as unprepared for most of the game against the Thundering Herd (8-5) as they had in losses to Nevada in the 2015 Arizona Bowl and Idaho in the 2016 Idaho Potato Bowl.

Fortunately for Colorado State University, this was only a bowl game, a lower-tier one, at that.

It’s impact on the future of CSU football program is insignificant.

Remember that great New Mexico Bowl win by the 2008 Rams, the one that was going to launch coach Steve Fairchild and his team to bigger and better things?

It was followed by three straight 3-9 seasons.

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And recruits who were watching from across the country just four days before the NCAA’s new early signing period? They’re just as likely to see they have an opportunity to come to CSU and play right away than to worry about signing with a team that can’t win bowl games.

Sure, winning bowl games is fun for players, coaches and fans. Marshall has won all five it’s played in coach Doc Holliday’s eight seasons at the school.

Those wins haven’t necessarily raised the profile of the Thundering Herd. They finished in a three-way tie for third place in C-USA’s East Division this year and have won just one conference title, in 2014, since 2002 despite winning six bowl games in the past eight years.

The Rams, Bobo said afterward, are closer to turning the corner than their three straight 7-6 seasons would suggest.

Closer than their performance Saturday showed, he said.

“It stinks when you come up short, it does,” Bobo said. “But I do think we’re closer than some might think. We’ve got to figure out a way to make those plays in critical situations and to learn how to win.

“We’re still trying to learn how to win, and you have to go through moments like that sometimes, but I do think our team put themselves out there; every game this year. They weren’t afraid of failing, and we failed, and it hurts, and it should hurt.

“But that’s what we’re going to build on; that feeling that we had.”

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CSU’s much-maligned defense was at its worst in the second and third quarters, allowing a Marshall offense ranked No. 94 nationally to score three touchdowns in a nine-play span early in the second quarter and a fourth on its first play of the second half.

The Thundering Herd scored touchdowns on a 76-yard pass and on runs of 68 and 90 yards, the latter breaking the bowl game’s record for the longest touchdown run of 77 yards set in 2008 by CSU’s Gartrell Johnson.

Quarterback Nick Stevens threw for 320 yards and two touchdowns and ran for two more scores. But he was under attack throughout the game by a Marshall defense that stuffed the Rams’ running game, allowing just 70 yards on 31 carries, while utilizing a variety of blitzes. The Thundering Herd was rushing five, six and seven players at a time on obvious passing downs, daring Stevens to get the ball off before they could get to him.

And, sometimes, he did. Bisi Johnson caught six passes for 119 yards, and Detrich Clark had two touchdown catches. But Stevens also missed several big pass plays with receivers open downfield.

Stevens was sacked five times, knocking him out of the game for a play at one point, and forced him to hurry six other throws. The Rams had only given up eight sacks coming into the game. He completed just 25 of 52 passes.

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Still, the Rams, down by as many as 17 points late in the third quarter, found themselves with a chance to win in the final minutes. But a fourth-and-5 pass by Stevens was batted at the line of scrimmage back into the hands of the quarterback, who was tackled for a 1-yard loss with 1:46 remaining. And the CSU defense, after using two timeouts, was unable to stop Marshall from picking up the first down it needed to run out the clock.

Three straight bowl losses under Bobo and four straight overall for the Rams.

“Coach always talks about finishing, and he has from the start,” Stevens said. “I think that’s something we’ve been striving for. I think we finished well toward the end of the regular season, but we haven’t been able to pull together an entire season, including the last game.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news and listen to him talk CSU sports at 11:35 a.m. Thursdays on KFKA radio (AM 1310).