Rashaad Boddie’s fumble in overtime will be remembered as the play that cost CSU’s football team a win late Saturday night over Boise State.

A program-changing win, at that.

But, as coach Mike Bobo said afterward, there were dozens of plays — “50 plays, maybe” that could have changed the outcome.

And the Rams, for the second week in a row, couldn’t make the one they needed to win, losing 59-52 in overtime in a game that didn’t end until 12:55 a.m. Sunday morning.

Boddie, a redshirt freshman filling in for an injured Dalyn Dawkins, had the ball ripped out of his hands by linebacker Leighton Vander Esch while gaining a first down at the Boise State 3-yard line. Cornerback Tyler Horton recovered, giving Boise State (8-2, 6-0 Mountain West) the most unlikely of victories.

Colorado State University scored touchdowns on its first five possessions, led 28-3 early in the second quarter, 35-17 at halftime and 52-38 with 3:02 remaining.

And still, the Rams (6-4, 4-3 Mountain West) couldn’t win.

They allowed two touchdowns in 44 seconds in the final minutes, thanks to a perfectly executed onside kick between the two scores that receiver Cedrick Wilson recovered while running down the sideline.

Live Recap: CSU football collapses, loses in overtime to Boise State

The second of those touchdowns, a 6-yard pass from Brett Rypien to tight end Jake Roh, tied the game with 57 seconds left. The Broncos then got the ball first in overtime, scoring a touchdown on a 4-yard run by Alexander Mattison.

CSU was trying to answer when Boddie coughed up the ball after picking up the 2 yards he needed for what would have been a first down inside the Boise State 3.

Instead, it was the final play of another gut-wrenching loss for the Rams, who led most of the game a week earlier before losing 16-13 to Border War rival Wyoming.

That loss basically eliminated the Rams from contention for the Mountain West’s Mountain Division title. This one ripped their hearts out.

“This week and last week definitely hurt a lot,” senior center Jake Bennett said. “I mean, we’ve got a two-score lead and a chance to really close it out there, and we let it happen. And then we get into overtime, offensively, we’ve got a chance to tie it up, and we let it slip away again.”

It was the third straight loss for the Rams, who had won four in a row before that in league play to get to 6-2 overall.

Maybe that’s why Bobo said he felt like his players were “hoping to win” instead of “believing and trying to hold on.”

A CSU team that found ways to win close games earlier this year at home against Nevada and on the road at New Mexico is finding ways to lose them now.

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Quarterback Nick Stevens threw for 309 yards and two touchdowns, overtaking Garrett Grayson as the school’s all-time leader in touchdown passes with 65, while leading an offense that put up 570 yards and 52 points – 28 more than any other Boise State opponent has scored in regulation this season.

Dawkins ran for 161 yards and two touchdowns on 32 carries before suffering an unspecified injury, and star receiver Michael Gallup had 102 receiving yards and one touchdown on 11 catches.

That should have been enough. More than enough, even.

But it wasn’t.

Rypien threw for 331 yards and four touchdowns for Boise State and Mattison ran for 242 yards and three TDs on 23 carries. Roh caught two touchdown passes for the Broncos, who hold a one-game lead and tie-breaker edge over Wyoming in the race for the Mountain Division title with three regular-season games remaining.

Three weeks ago, CSU had the chance to control its destiny like that. Now, the Rams need to beat lowly San Jose State (1-10, 0-6) at home next Saturday simply to have a winning record in league play and match the seven regular-season victories they had in Bobo’s first two seasons as coach.

It wasn’t just Boddie who fumbled away a season that held so much promise. It was the entire team, coaches included, Bobo said.

“You’re going to look back, and there’s a million plays in my head right now that were opportunites for us to finish the game, and we couldn’t finish,” Bobo said. “… We’ve got to be able to make that play, which we didn’t tonight.

“We made a lot of them, we just didn’t make enough.”

The Rams won a lot of games this season, too. But they haven’t won enough.

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).