CU Women’s Basketball
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CU women put it all together–at last
Feb 12th
Release: February 10, 2014
By: Troy Andre, Assistant SID
EUGENE, Ore. – Playing in her native Oregon, Jen Reese felt right at home scoring 18 points and grabbing 13 rebounds as Colorado clipped Oregon 81-75 Monday at Matthew Knight Arena.
Playing aggressive defense and dominating on the boards, Colorado held Oregon, the nation’s top scoring offense, 20 points below its season average. Colorado (14-9, 4-8 Pac-12) grabbed a season-high 54 rebounds, including 24 on the offensive end.
Colorado’s 24 offensive boards translated into 25 second-chance points.
“We were more aggressive in rebounding and that really helped,” said Reese who corralled her third career double-double. “We gave the first punch; we knew we had to box out. They are a great offensive rebounding team and we knew coming in that was going to be a huge factor.
And it wasn’t just Reese on the boards. Arielle Roberson had nine with her 17 points, just missing a double-double. Jamee Swan had eight points and eight rebounds off the bench.
Rachel Hargis also came up with some key minutes down the stretch. She scored seven of her eight points in the second half, getting two key baskets in the final minutes. Hargis was credited with only two rebounds, but her presence in the paint, which included a season-high three blocked shots, caused issues for the Ducks.
“Today, we really focused on our defense and it hasn’t been what it has been in the past,” Hargis said. “If we keep doing that, we’ll get back to where we need to be and we’ll go into the conference tournament with some confidence.”
Oregon forward Jillian Alleyne who entered the game averaging 21.4 points and a nation-best 15.6 rebounds per game, was held to single figures in rebounding for just the third time this season, finishing with nine to go along with 15 points.
Freshman guard Chrishae Rowe scored a game-high 23 points for Oregon on 7-of-19 shooting. Colorado held the Ducks to 33 percent from the field while the Buffaloes shot 44 percent.
Colorado led by as many as 15 points in the first half, but the Ducks stormed back using a 14-4 run to take its first lead at 46-45 with 15:34 left.
The Buffaloes regrouped with a stretch that epitomized the Buffaloes effort on the boards. CU capitalized on three consecutive offensive rebounds to help push its lead back up to eight.
Up by one after a couple of Swan free throws, Swan missed a layup but Reese was in perfect position for the tip in. Fouled on the play, Reese missed the free throw, but Swan got the offensive board and was fouled herself.
Swan made the first but missed the second. This time Lexy Kresl grabbed the offensive board. She was able to split the Oregon defense for a layup as Colorado increased its lead to 52-46. Following a Megan Carpenter missed jumper, Swan grabbed the long rebound and went coast-to-coast, capping of a 9-0 run and a 54-46 Buffaloes advantage.
“I think there’s always flows of the game,” head coach Linda Lappe said. “We knew coming out of halftime, a nine point lead against Oregon is nothing. We wanted to come out aggressive, but we didn’t do that as well. But I like how we composed ourselves. When we have the mentality defensively, we’re going to make plays on offense. Even offensively, we had to grind it out at times tonight, and we did that.”
Oregon stayed close with the long ball. The Ducks hit six of their 10 3-pointers in the second half. When it looked like Colorado could pull away after Reese gave the Buffs a 61-51 lead, Lexi Petersen drilled a 3-pointer that began an 18-5 run for the Ducks. Petersen hit a second long ball during that stretch and Ariel Thomas capped off the run with a 3-pointer to give Oregon a 69-66 lead with 4:41 remaining.
But Colorado never let the Ducks extend the lead beyond that. Hargis, who scored seven of her eight points during the final stretch, answered Thomas with a bucket.
Colorado then clamped down defensively, allowing Oregon (13-10, 4-8) only four points in the final four minutes.
Reese scored the go-ahead bucket on a short baseline jumper with 45 seconds left to break a 75-75 tie. After getting a stop on the defensive end, Brittany Wilson gave Colorado that all-important four-point lead on a pair of free throws with 15 seconds left.
After stopping the Ducks for the second straight possession, Ashley Wilson accounted for the final points with a pair of free throws to close the game. In all the Ducks came up empty on eight of their final 10 possessions.
“Our overall mentality was different from the start of the game,” Lappe said. “When you’re willing to do whatever it takes and rebound the basketball, you can turn it around.”
Brittany Wilson finished with 11 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals. Haley Smith scored a career-best nine points on 4-of-6 shooting and dished out three assists.
Colorado returns to action on Friday, Feb. 14, by hosting Washington at the Coors Events Center at 6:30 p.m.
Brooks: Buffs Rely On Tightened ‘D’ In Rout Of Utes
Feb 2nd
Colorado’s coach was more focused on what her team didn’t do than most anything Utah did – and fine-tuning her team was the right approach. Lappe’s Buffs clamped down defensively, made a few offensive tweaks and dispatched the Utes 61-45 at the Coors Events Center.
“It was good to get that win,” Lappe said. “I thought our players stepped up and did some good things on the defensive end and in rebounding.”
Winning for only the second time in their past eight games, the Buffs (13-8, 3-7) scored the afternoon’s first points and never trailed thereafter. CU led 33-16 at halftime, by as many as 20 points early in the second half, and allowed the Utes (10-11, 3-7) no closer than 13 for the rest of the game.
‘D’ was key for the Buffs, who had shot below 40 percent from the field in nine of their previous 11 games. While Sunday’s shooting percentage didn’t climb above 40 (35.8), CU held Utah to a frigid 25.9 percent – well below the 38.8 the Utes shot in Wednesday night’s 58-55 win.
In that game, CU’s Arielle Roberson and Jen Reese combined for only nine points. By halftime Sunday, Roberson-Reese had 16 between them – Roberson with 9, Reese with 7. Reese didn’t score in the second half, but Roberson doubled her first-half productivity and finished as the game’s high scorer (18).
Roberson said Lappe’s characterization of the Buffs now as “underdogs” made them “all come out and be more aggressive . . . we threw the first punch and were more aggressive.”
Defensively, said Roberson, the Buffs “boxed out a lot better, got a lot of defensive rebounds. We were better on our fouls, so I think (Lappe) was very pleased about that. We were scrappy, we were in passing lanes, and that set the tone for our offense.”
Brittany Wilson added 10 points for CU, seven of them in the second half. Freshmen Haley Smith contributed eight points and eight rebounds, matching Roberson’s board total. Lappe said Smith “played tremendous. I liked her demeanor . . . she was aggressive and that gave us a lot of energy and helped our overall intensity.”
Smith, a 6-0 wing from Sammamish, Wash., called Sunday’s win “a good bounce-back game for us . . . I think our mentality is changing.”
Sophomore Jamee Swan, who had scored 15 points and collected eight rebounds in Wednesday night’s loss, was held out of Sunday’s first for violating a team rule. She played 5 minutes, totaling one point and two rebounds.
Utah had one player in double figures – guard Danielle Rodriguez with 11. Forward Michelle Plouffe, the Utes’ high scorer (14) in Wednesday’s game, went 1-for-10 from the field Sunday and finished with 7 points. Cheyenne Wilson, who had 11 points against the Buffs in the earlier meeting, managed nine in the rematch.
Lappe credited Roberson, Reese and Rachel Hargis for their defensive work on Plouffe and for turning Sunday’s game in a guards duel.
“We match up well with her (but) you always have to know where (Plouffe) is,” Lappe said, noting that Hargis did “a great job” in spelling Roberson, which allowed Roberson to stay fresh on the offensive end.
The Buffs raced to a 33-16 halftime lead, finally ending a long 3-point drought and getting an impressive first-half finish from freshman Zoe Beard-Fails.
After missing the last 13 trey attempts – a span of 88:33 or two-plus games – CU got a 3-pointer from Reese to take a 5-2 lead that was never relinquished. Roberson closed the Buffs’ first-half scoring with a straightaway triple from the top of the key.
CU finished the half 2-of-6 from beyond the arc and got one of its top 3-point shooters – junior guard Lexy Kresl – back on the court. Kresl, out for the previous three games with a lower leg injury, played 4 first-half minutes but did not attempt a shot. But with 6:45 to play in the game, she knocked down a critical trey to send CU ahead 50-31. The Buffs finished 3-of-11 from behind the arc.
Lappe said Kresl wasn’t necessarily ahead of schedule in her comeback, noting that she will be brought along slowly and monitored for this week’s games. The Buffs visit the Pacific Northwest this week, playing at Oregon State on Friday (9 p.m. MT) and at Oregon on Sunday (3 p.m. MT).
Beard-Fails, who had scored six points in the previous nine Pac-12 games, matched that total in final 2:38 of Sunday’s first half. The 6-2 Beard-Fails, of Herndon, Va., followed a pair of free throws with two inside baskets as the Buffs stretched their advantage to 30-16.
Half a minute later, Roberson drained her 3-pointer, giving CU its 17-point lead at the break. The Buffs owned a healthy 27-12 rebounding edge after the first 20 minutes (51-35 for the game), but they committed 11 turnovers (17 for the game) which the Utes converted into 11 first-half points – the key number in keeping Utah as close as it was after one half. The plus-15 board advantage was the Buffs’ biggest in a half this season.
CU shot 42.9 percent in the opening half and went into the second half wanting that stat to hold up. It didn’t, but the Buffs compensated on the defensive end. They kept their intensity up to open the final 20 minutes, opened a pair of 20-point leads and kept the Utes playing catch up for the remainder of the game.
Utah coach Anthony Levrets applauded CU for adjusting after Wednesday’s game: “When they played big the first time, we had our two guards guarding Arielle on the perimeter, and then that allowed Plouffe to guard Reese.
“When they went back small today, it was a really good move by them because then our ‘five’ man has to either guard Reese or Roberson –and neither one of them is ever a ‘five.’ Playing on the perimeter was really hard for our big girls. It was a great adjustment by Colorado and I give a lot of credit to them.”
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU