Dinos jump to third in national rankings

It wasn’t all that long ago that people were talking about 2018 as a rebuilding year for the University of Calgary Dinos.

They’re not talking that way anymore.

Not after the Dinos battled through a tough early schedule that seemingly saw them constantly travelling across Western Canada.

Not after they emerged from that stretch with a 4-0 record and jumped to No. 3 in the national USports rankings.

Suddenly, the young Dinos look very much like a team that could help the program win the Canada West Division for the eighth time in 10 years.

As his team prepares to host the Saskatchewan Huskies on Saturday (1 p.m., McMahon Stadium), Dinos head coach Wayne Harris insisted that the team’s hot start hasn’t changed the way anyone around the program is thinking.

“I don’t think we’re really resetting the expectations, we have a certain expectation we ask our team to meet each and every year,” Harris said. “Whether you’re a first-year player or a fifth year player, we ask for the same kind of effort in practice and being able to focus on all the right things, instead of trying to figure out where we’ll be eight games down the road. It’s one game at a time.”

On Saturday, that game comes against a Huskies team that has beaten everyone who’s been thrown in their way this season, other than the Dinos themselves.

When the teams met two weeks ago in Saskatoon, Dinos QB Adam Sinagra had one of the great games in Canadian university football — no exaggeration — completing 32-of-40 passes for 569 yards and three touchdowns.

In the end, the Calgary crew came away with a 37-28 win.

A similar result Saturday at McMahon Stadium would create some serious distance between the Dinos and the rest of the Canada West pack heading into the Thanksgiving bye-week. That’s no guarantee, though. “They’re a big, physical team that’s playing with a lot of confidence,” Harris said. “They have a very good running game, (Tyler) Chow is running the ball very, very well. Siemens, at quarterback has been playing very well.”

It would be fundamentally incorrect to say that if the Dinos win on Saturday, their place atop the division will be secure.

There are still three more games on the schedule, after all, and mathematically their fortunes could change.