BOULDER — Ral­phie couldn’t run Sat­ur­day night with coro­n­avirus restric­tions at Fol­som Field.

No prob­lem. The Buffs had Jarek Broussard.

The only hard-charg­ing Buf­fa­lo required against UCLA wore No. 23 and rum­bled past Bru­in defend­ers all game long. Time to for­mal­ly intro­duce the next bud­ding star in Boul­der: Say hel­lo to Brous­sard before he streaks into the opponent’s end zone.

CU began the Karl Dor­rell era in style with a 48–42 vic­to­ry over the pro­gram that fired Dor­rell as head coach back in 2007. Brous­sard, a red­shirt sopho­more in his first career start, car­ried the foot­ball 31 times for 187 yards and three touch­downs. The 5‑foot‑9 Dal­las native is the first Buf­faloes run­ning back to score three times in his start­ing debut since 1969 (Bob­by Anderson).

“This real­ly means a lot to us. There were a lot of things we had to go through with the coro­n­avirus … it real­ly felt good to get the (win) tonight,” Brous­sard said. “I’m a lit­tle nicked up, but if we had to go anoth­er quar­ter, you would have seen me out there.”

With senior quar­ter­back Sam Noy­er mak­ing his first start, CU led by as many as 28 points before hold­ing off a fierce UCLA comeback.

The Buffs’ ear­ly cush­ion was gift­ed through excep­tion­al spe­cial teams and defen­sive play.

CU punt­ed after its open­ing pos­ses­sion stalled, but regained the foot­ball on the ensu­ing return when Buffs safe­ty Der­rion Rakestraw forced a fum­ble recov­ered by CU inside the Bru­ins’ 30-yard line. CU scored three plays lat­er on a Brous­sard rush­ing touchdown.

UCLA’s self-inflict­ed issues con­tin­ued on its next series when quar­ter­back Dori­an Thomp­son-Robin­son was inter­cept­ed by CU out­side line­backer Car­son Wells, who got dragged down just before the goal line. Brous­sard rushed for his sec­ond touch­down to put the Buffs up 14–0 mid­way through the first quarter.

Noy­er threw his first career CU touch­down pass, a 12-yard strike to tight end Brady Rus­sell, to give the Buffs a 21–7 advan­tage in the sec­ond quar­ter. How­ev­er, CU opt­ed to play quar­ter­back Tyler Lytle on its next dri­ve, and the offense suf­fered its first three-and-out of the night. Noy­er replaced Lytle on the team’s fol­low­ing series and he remained in the game.

CU’s defense kept cook­ing after a pair of sec­ond-quar­ter fum­ble recov­er­ies, with the sec­ond lead­ing to yet anoth­er Brous­sard rush­ing score. The Buffs entered half­time with a com­mand­ing 35–14 lead.

UCLA didn’t back down after the break, scor­ing three touch­downs on their first three pos­ses­sions, with each dri­ve last­ing few­er than two min­utes. CU place­kick­er James Ste­fanou also had a long field goal attempt blocked. The Bru­ins trailed by just a touch­down, 42–35, late in the third quarter.

But Noy­er calmed nerves with a method­i­cal 10-play dri­ve capped by a quar­ter­back sneak across the goal line. The Buffs added two field goals from Evan Price to go up 48–35. UCLA scored its final touch­down with under 2 min­utes left, but was unable to recov­er an onside kick before CU bled the clock.

“They should feel con­fi­dent they can win a lot of games,” Dor­rell said. “We won our first one and that’s a big bonus for us.”

Noy­er fin­ished the night 20-of-31 pass­ing for 257 yards and two touch­downs (one rushing).

The Buf­faloes (1–0) trav­el to face Stan­ford next Sat­ur­day. UCLA (0–1) hosts Utah on Friday.