Posts tagged Friday
WBB: Buffs take it to wire, but lose
Mar 2nd
Release: March 02, 2014
By: B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor
BOULDER – The Colorado women’s basketball team had won its two previous games by going into second-half survival mode, locking down Arizona and UCLA in the last 20 minutes. Twice was nice, but the magic finally fizzled Sunday afternoon against Southern California.
Gritty CU erased a 12-point halftime deficit, even took a one-point lead in the last 2 minutes, but couldn’t close out USC in a 66-59 Pac-12 Conference loss at the Coors Events Center. A 55-45 win in January’s league opener gave the Trojans a series sweep.
Needing a full 40-minute effort to send out seniors Rachel Hargis and the Wilson twins – Ashley and Brittany – on a celebratory note, the Buffaloes’ focus was sporadic in the first half and they couldn’t fully compensate for it in the second.
CU (16-13, 6-12) trailed by as many as 14 points in the first half and nine midway through the second before catching USC (18-12, 11-7) at 56-56 and going ahead 59-58 on an “and-one” by Brittany Wilson with 1:22 remaining.
But the Trojans scored the game’s last eight points – six of them by junior guard Ariya Crook, a former high school teammate of the Wilsons. Crook hit a layup and went four-of-four from the free throw line in the final 56 seconds, finishing with a game-high 18 points.
“You would think at this point in the season with every game meaning something, there would be a lot of focus throughout the game,” CU coach Linda Lappe said, noting her team was “all over the place” mentally in the first half. “For us, the free throw line is something you can look at and see really quickly if we’re focused. When we’re focused, we knock down free throws 70-80 percent of the time. When we’re not, we shoot about 30-45 percent from the line.”
That was one of Sunday’s trouble spots for CU. Although they hit eight more field goals than the Trojans (25-17), that advantage was blunted by the Buffs’ dismal 9-of-21 (42.9 percent) from the free throw line. CU also missed all nine of its 3-point attempts, but had decided edges in points in the paint (40-12), second-chance points (10-3) and bench points (24-17).
Yet falling behind by 14 early, catching up, then falling back late by nine took its toll in spent energy. “You can’t spot a good team 12 points,” said Lappe. “Ultimately we ran out of gas at the end as well as time . . . I thought we came out ready, but it lasted about five minutes, and then we kind of sputtered through the rest of the first half. We turned the ball over too much (20 times) and missed some easy shots.”
Brittany Wilson, who scored a team-best 15 points, said playing catch up for most of the afternoon was a grueling exercise for the Buffs: “I felt it. We were tired, but we were going to fight, and that’s one thing that we’ve done all year. It is hard coming back from a 12-point deficit, but we all knew we could do it, so I thought we did a great job believing that and we gave a great fight at the end.”
CU had held its past two opponents to a combined five field goals in the second half of each game, allowing 22 total points to Arizona and UCLA in winning both games. After watching the Trojans shoot 47.6 percent (10-of-21) in Sunday’s first half, the Buffs tightened up their ‘D’ again in the second half, limiting USC to 25.9 percent (7-of-27).
But the talented Trojans were better down the stretch than either the Wildcats or Bruins, even with senior forward Cassie Harberts (14 points) contending with four fouls.
In addition to Brittany Wilson’s 15 points, Ashley Wilson, freshman Zoe Beard-Fails and sophomore Jamee Swan added 10 each. Hargis scored six, including a foul-line jumper that brought the Buffs to within 56-54 with 3:39 to play.
“It’s funny because at the game on Friday, I passed up that same shot, and this time, I just caught it right in rhythm,” Hargis said. “I actually heard Ashley scream my name, but I was already into the shot, so I just took it and it bounced around. I was ready to grab it if it was coming out, but it rolled it in, so I was glad.”
The Buffs were without junior forward Jen Reese on Sunday and will be for this week’s Pac-12 Conference Tournament and any further postseason play. Reese, averaging 12 points and 5.8 rebounds a game, suffered a broken bone in her left shoulder near the conclusion of the first half in Friday night’s 62-42 win against UCLA. The Buffs, seeded No. 9, and the Bruins, seeded No. 8, play again in Thursday’s Pac-12 opening round in Seattle (1 p.m. MST, Pac-12 Network, KKZN AM 760)
CU stayed close for the first 41/2 minutes Sunday, but after a 10-10 tie USC put together an 18-4 run and took a 14-point lead (28-14) that the Buffs could reduce by only two (34-22) at intermission. If the Buffs were to extend their winning streak to three games, another defensive lock down would be needed in the second half. An upturn on offense might help, too.
CU got both, holding USC without a field goal in the first 6:00 and outscoring the Trojans 14-2 to tie the score at 36-36 on a put-back by Beard-Fails. Brittany Wilson contributed six of the 14 points in CU’s early second-half run.
USC quickly went back in front by nine (47-38) but CU cut into that deficit with two Brittany Wilson free throws, a layup by Swan on a nice feed from Arielle Roberson, then two Swan foul shots, pulling to 49-44 with 8:48 remaining. But a 3-pointer from the top of the key by Desiree Bradley gave USC a 52-44 lead.
The Trojans maintained an eight- or six-point edge until Ashley Wilson hit a layup and Hargis added her foul-line jumper after Wilson’s missed free throw, cutting USC’s lead to 56-54. Swan’s up-and-under layup tied the score at 56-56 with 2:38 left.
Harberts broke the tie (58-56) with two free throws, but Brittany Wilson converted a conventional three-point play with a layup and a foul shot, giving CU a 59-58 lead with 1:21 to play. Unfortunately for the Buffs, the three points by “B-Wil” would be their last of the regular season.
Although CU closed the regular season by winning two of its last three, Lappe said defeating USC would have generated even more momentum for the Pac-12 Tournament. “I thought we had great momentum after the second half against Arizona, and we took that into UCLA, but then tonight we just didn’t have enough,” she said. “Are we getting better? Yes, we’re still getting better. Are we there yet? No. The good thing about this time of the year, and why they call it March Madness, is that anything can happen.”
Still, Hargis said the wins against Arizona and UCLA and Sunday’s refusal to roll over created “some more positive energy going into the tournament. Before, we were kind of down and didn’t know what we could do. We know now that we can be a great team. We just have to buckle down, focus and play the whole 40 minutes, not start off so badly and we just really have to work hard in practice this week to be ready to go Thursday.”
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
CU tennis: Ranked opponents go down; Buffs rise
Feb 25th
Coming off back-to-back victories over ranked opponents, the University of Colorado women’s tennis team finds itself as the No. 54 ranked squad in the nation, announced Monday by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA). Of the 75 schools ranked in the weekly poll, only Ohio State made a bigger debut in the rankings as the Buckeyes went unranked a week ago to No. 52 Monday afternoon. OSU upset then-No. 27 Tennessee, 4-3 last week in Columbus.
The Buffaloes (6-3) winners of three-straight matches upset then-No. 54 Wichita State, 4-2 on Sunday, and last Friday, defeated in-state rival and then-No. 57 Denver, 4-3. The pair of wins over ranked opponents is the first time a head coach Nicole Kenneally-team has knocked off ranked foes consecutively since 2010. CU defeated No. 63 Utah in a match played at Berkeley, Calif., and No. 65 BYU, a week later at the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center. Both scores were 4-3.
It’s also the first time the Buffaloes defeated ranked opponents at home since 2007 knocking off No. 12 William & Mary and No. 43 Oklahoma State, both by 4-3 tallies. Of the 11 schools in the Pac-12 that sponsor women’s tennis, only Oregon is not ranked this week. CU at No. 54, joins UCLA (No. 2), Stanford (No. 4), USC (No. 6), Cal (No. 14), Washington (No. 24), Arizona State (No. 29), Utah (No. 44), Washington State (No. 51), and Arizona (No. 60). Last April, CU spent two matches as the No. 75 ranked team after upsetting No. 59 Oregon at the South Campus Courts. Prior to last April, the Buffs were nationally ranked in April 2010 as No. 68 when they were a member of the Big 12 Conference.
That season, CU was ranked as high as No. 51. CU takes to the road for four consecutive matches traveling to New Mexico this Friday (Feb. 28), then taking on Ball State (Mar. 2) in a match played in Albuquerque. CU opens Pac-12 Conference play at Washington State (Mar. 7) and at Oregon (Mar. 9). The conference home opener is March 14 against USC and UCLA on March 16. Both home matches are to be played at the South Campus Courts, weather permitting. -COLORADO-
Andrew Green | Assistant Director Sports Information Department of Intercollegiate Athletics | University of Colorado Boulder | 357 UCB | Fieldhouse Annex 50
WBB: Swan and A-Wil weren’t enough to beat Huskies
Feb 15th
Husky’s backcourt unstoppable, but Buffs were in the game til the very end
BOULDER – Colorado’s Jamee Swan and Ashley Wilson hit career highpoints on Friday night, but a business-as-usual performance by Washington’s backcourt trumped them and the Buffaloes.
While Swan (25 points) and Wilson (15) were scoring career highs and Wilson was collecting her first career double-double with 10 rebounds, UW guards Kelsey Plum and Jazmine Davis were combining for 49 points to push the Huskies past the Buffs 87-80 at the Coors Events Center.
It wasn’t anything the Buffs hadn’t seen before – and they didn’t have many answers then either. In UW’s 81-71 Pac-12 Conference win last month in Seattle, they combined for 55 points, with Plum getting 35 and Davis 20.
On Friday night, Plum scored 25, Davis 24. They entered the game as the nation’s No. 2 top scoring backcourt, averaging 38.9 points.
“Washington’s two guards were outstanding . . . they torched us,” said CU coach Linda Lappe. “They pretty much did whatever they wanted to do . . . Davis carried them in first half (with 14 points), Plum came alive in the second (with 18). They were tough for us to guard.”
Still, even with Plum-Davis running mostly unchecked, the Buffs (14-10, 4-9) stayed in contention, cutting a 10-point Huskies lead to three twice in the final 1:16 but failing take the rally any further.
After tying the score at 60-60 on a Swan put-back with 8:57 remaining, a 10-0 run pushed UW ahead by 10 (70-60). CU first closed to within three (81-78) on Jen Reese’s first four points of the night, then got to within three again (83-80) on a basket by Arielle Roberson, who finished with 14 points and nine rebounds.
But three points back was as close as the Buffs would get, and Wilson said the game was lost by CU’s inability to “get those crucial stops, whether it was keeping them from scoring or getting a defensive rebound . . . It all comes down to the same thing: we make a push and tie the game and then we have a mental lapse where we don’t get that stop or defensive rebound. It’s been like that all conference season long.”
Lappe said scoring that many points – CU was averaging 70.2 – should have rewarded her team with a win: “Anytime we score 80, that has to be a game where we find a way to win. But it just didn’t go the right way tonight . . . you can’t give up 87 points; there are very few games that we will win that way. We just didn’t do what it took on the defensive side.”
Swann, whose previous career high was 20 against Stanford, said the Buffs lost focus late: “I think it comes down to who wants it more and it just happens that they want it a little more than us and we lose focus.”
UW coach Mike Neighbors didn’t seem surprised by Swan’s productivity. “She was on the scouting report because we recruited the heck out of that kid,” he said. “We wanted her very badly . . . she got it really going and we didn’t have a lot to answer – 25 points in 18 minutes . . . I’m just glad she had five fouls (No. 5 came with 1:30 left) or otherwise she could have had 50 (points).”
UW (14-10, 7-6) outscored CU 34-26 in the paint, outrebounded the Buffs 45-38 and converted 13 CU turnovers into 18 points. CU’s bench outscored UW’s 36-19 – mainly on Swan’s contribution before she fouled out with 1:30 to play. The Buffs hurt themselves at the free throw line, converting only 21 of 33 attempts. The Huskies shot 46.7 percent from the field (28-for-60), the Buffs 40.9 percent (27-for-66).
CU jumped to a 9-2 lead but UW recovered quickly with an 11-2 run and took its first lead on a Plum 3-pointer with 15:01 left before intermission. Davis followed with trey on the Huskies’ next possession, giving them their largest advantage (16-11) of the first half.
The first half’s last 13 minutes produced six ties and 11 lead changes before Ashley Wilson hit one of two free throws with 22.1 seconds left to put CU up 40-39 at the break.
The Huskies took a 49-43 to open the second half, getting back-to-back treys by Davis and Talia Walton, the latter hitting her triple with 16:38 left in the game. The Buffs fought back, closing to 51-50 on a 3-pointer by Lexy Kresl with just over 13 minutes remaining.
But the Huskies answered with a 6-0 run on consecutive conventional three-point plays by Plum and Chantel Osahor to open a seven-point advantage – 57-50 – with 12:19 to play.
If CU was to make a move, it would have to be soon. Ashley Wilson and Swan made two free throws each to pull the Buffs to within 57-54. After Swan scored consecutive baskets to tie the score at 60-60, the Huskies got 3-pointers from Osahor – only her second in five games – and Mercedes Wetmore and two free throws each from Katie Collier and Plum to pull ahead 70-60.
It was UW’s largest lead of the night, but a runner by Plum in the lane put CU behind 11 (75-64) just over a minute later. The Buffs pulled to within five (76-71) on a trey by Ashley Wilson, then seven (81-74) on a triple by Kresl with 1:16 left.
Reese got her first points of the night on a jumper to bring CU to 81-76 with 1:06 remaining, then hit a pair of free throws 3 seconds later to cut the deficit to 81-78. A layup by Roberson made it 83-80 but the Huskies closed it out with four free throws by Aminah Williams in the final 22 seconds.
“It took some warriors to win and I was so proud of our kids up and down the bench,” Neighbors said. “We get 19 (points) and 12 (rebounds) off of our bench tonight. There’s been games where we’ve gotten zero and zero.”
CU returns to the CEC on Sunday afternoon (1:30 p.m., Pac-12 Networks) to play Washington State.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU