In football, there’s a big difference between 41 points and 10 points.

There’s an even bigger difference between 45 and 3.

But despite the back-to-back blowouts — first to Oregon and then to Washington State — Colorado Buffaloes head coach Mel Tucker still believed his team is inches away from competing.

The missed deep connection between Steven Montez and Laviska Shenault who had beaten his defender to the end zone against Washington’s State only missed by inches.

The five free runners at Washington State’s quarterback who couldn’t bring him down only missed by inches.

The four defenders who got their hands on the ball against Washington State but couldn’t haul it in only missed by inches.

The Buffs were closer to the Cougars than the 41-10 final score would suggest.

At least that’s the message Mel Tucker wanted to send to his team when he switched up the weekly routine prior to the USC contest Friday night. Practice began Sunday instead of Monday, due to the short week, but instead of the standard Monday walkthrough, Tucker brought the entire team into one room and played the Washington State game from start to finish, less than 24 hours after its conclusion.

The coaching staff showed the barely-missed connection, the barely-missed sacks and the barely-missed interceptions.

“You see where you’re just really, really close on some things,” Tucker said a few days later. “It’s a game of inches. It’s not just a cliche, it really is.”

Over the course of a game those inches can pile up if you let them. Over the course of a season, the pile can become a mountain.

Tucker’s mission was to simplify, to reinforce the idea that if each of the 11 guys on the field does his job Colorado can win any down against anybody, to show that one weak link can spoil the team effort and that nearly everybody on the team had been a culprit.

At one point during the film session, a defensive coach pointed out a flawed technique from a defensive back. It was a teaching moment designed to fix the mistake on the defensive side of the ball but it made a larger impact.

Quarterback Steven Montez spoke up, saying that the technical tip could help him read the intent of his opponents.

Tucker said he wanted to use the exercise to teach his team how every player interacts with the others, not just how the linebackers and defensive backs work together in coverage, but how the offense can impact the defense and special teams.

When his team took the field against USC, it played a lot cleaner. The Trojans may be a similar caliber team to the Washington State squad CU played a week prior, but rather than losing by 31 points, Colorado held a lead into the game’s final minutes before falling 35-31.

“I’m not real big into moral victories but I think we did some positive things, some things that we can definitely build on in the future,” Colorado quarterback Steven Montez said after the game. “We just have to do a little bit more and get it done. That’s just plain and simple. That’s what it is. Just got to do a little bit more and get it done.”

The Buffs shored up a lot of problems on Friday but you don’t beat a team like USC unless you play flawless football. There are still bones to be picked; the decisions made by the coaching staff were too conservative or too aggressive depending on who you ask, the running game failed in the fourth quarter when it totaled just five yards on six carries, their were still a couple of big plays allowed in the passing game.

But one problem remains above the rest.

“When you get 13 penalties for over 100 yards it is really hard to win,” Tucker said after the game. “Every 100 yards is a touchdown.”

Eliminate the penalties and, by Tucker’s logic, Colorado wins the game. Limit them, and it’s close.

The penalty numbers spiked since the start of the Buffs’ three-game losing streak that knocked them off-pace for their second bowl appearance in a dozen years. Tucker says some are technique penalties and others are discipline penalties and there’s one discipline penalty that has been particularly difficult for Colorado to shake.

The Buffs know why they keep false starting but they haven’t been able to stop.

Colorado’s offense uses a silent count. Instead of a vocal cadence from Montez to snap the ball, he just claps. This makes it easier to run the offense on the road when opposing fans are yelling louder than the quarterback can.

But defenses have caught on.

They line up in one formation then, right before the snap they’ll snap into a different formation to keep the offense on its toes.

Here’s where the false starts come from, according to Montez and senior center Tim Lynott:

When it’s time to snap into position, a linebacker will yell “Move!” He’ll yell it loudly and sharply so that, a few times per game, an offensive lineman will jump. Tim Lynott said Oregon used this tactic the most.

“They do that to make people move,” Lynott said. “That’s their main goal.”

Montez and Lynott agree that the false starts need to be cleaned up, but Montez admitted that it isn’t easy.

“If you’ve ever played a line before and you’re sitting up there and you’re about to run full force into a dude,” Montez said, “it’s kind of hard holding your water, especially when people are yelling ‘move’ or whatever and shift and all that stuff. It gets tough.”

Colorado tried to crack down on the penalty last week. Tucker hired four referees to officiate Wednesday’s practice, in an effort to eliminate the penalties. Obviously, that didn’t solve the problem.

Friday night’s loss was evidence of a major step forward from the two previous weeks in several areas, but there’s still work to be done.

“We are going to build on the positives and then we are going to eliminate the negatives,” Tucker said. “There were some positives there, but just a very disappointed locker room right now… We weren’t able to finish.”