Buffs Falter In 75-64 Pac-12 Loss 

by B.G. Brooks

SALT LAKE CITY – For the Colorado men’s basketball team, the start of second halves has become the beginning of the end. The Buffaloes’ all-too-familiar script for failure played out again Saturday in a 75-64 Pac-12 Conference loss to Utah.

After a 30-30 halftime tie, the Utes outscored the Buffs 15-2 to open the second half and take a 45-32 lead. But that was a mere continuation of the last stages of the first 20 minutes. Over those final 4-plus minutes and the first 7-plus of the second half, Utah outscored its visitors from the other side of the Rockies 23-2.

And Senior Day at the Jon M. Huntsman Center was all but a wrap.

“Right now second halves are baffling when it comes to the Buffs,” coach Tad Boyle said. “This is three out of the last four games when you go back to UCLA . . . same way. They just had their way with us offensively in the second half – Arizona and now Utah. It happens once you think, OK, maybe somebody got hot, it’s an aberration. But it’s not . . . we’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror and understand that right now we’re not good enough in the second half defensively.”

In an 88-61 home loss to No. 4 Arizona last weekend, the Buffs allowed the Wildcats to shoot 84.9 percent from the field in the second half. Saturday, the Utes made 70.8 percent of their second-half field goal attempts. Utah also outrebounded CU by three after losing the board battle by 18 in Boulder in the Buffs’ 79-75 overtime win.

Boyle called that a “big swing,” but pointed to porous defense as a culprit for even the slightest board advantage. “There’s not a lot of rebounds to be had,” he said. “That’s why it gets down to defense. When you’re taking the ball out of the next 70 or 85 percent of the time – holy cow, you better be making a lot of shots. I don’t think there’s an offense out there in college basketball to overcome those numbers.”

The Buffs (20-9, 9-7) closed to within nine points twice in the final 10 minutes Saturday but came no closer as the Utes (19-9, 8-8) improved to 18-2 at home this season. The Utes have now won 21 of 24 at the Huntsman Center dating to last season.

Jordan Loveridge and Delon Wright led Utah with 21 points each, while CU had two players in double figures – Josh Scott with 17 and Xavier Johnson with 10. Askia Booker finished with four points, a pair of first-half free throws and one field goal in the second half.

Freshman Dustin Thomas, who went scoreless in the teams’ first meeting last month in Boulder, hit a 3-pointer to open Saturday’s scoring and got CU’s first seven points as the Buffs took a 7-2 lead.
“I came out with confidence. I knew we had to jump on them early and I wanted to do what I could do for the team,” Thomas said.

CU led by as many as eight (30-22) before an 8-0 Utah run – courtesy of treys by Loveridge and Brandon Taylor – produced a 30-30 halftime tie. The Utes never led in the first half, and it was the first time this season the Buffs have been tied at intermission.

Then came another second-half swoon . . .

“We turned the ball over and we didn’t get stops. Those two things combined hurt; that’s the key to the second half,” Scott said, referring to CU’s five first-half turnovers and 11 in the second half. Utah converted those 16 miscues into 19 points.

Thomas said the Utes “just came out real aggressive” in the second half. “We didn’t come out and match their aggressiveness. We have to do that to every opponent we face; if we do that we’ll be all right. When we’re down we have to come together on the court instead of looking at each other.”

Another second-half failure, said Boyle, was not running the offense through Scott. Boyle said the Buffs might be understanding they have to play through Scott, not meaning that the 6-10 post must score on every possession, “But we have to play inside-out. When we do we’re pretty good. But the offensive struggles bleeding over into the defensive part of the floor has got to stop. We’re just not good enough defensively, though.”

CU finished the afternoon shooting 21-of-53 (39.6 percent) while Utah shot 59.6 percent from the field (28-of-47) – including the blistering 70.8 percent (17-of-24) in the final 20 minutes.
Among CU’s biggest first-half difficulties was finishing at the rim. The Buffs missed half a dozen point-blank attempts, enabling Utah to hold a 16-10 advantage in paint points and finish with a 38-22 advantage.

Booker finished the first half with only a pair of free throws and two fouls that sent him to the bench at the 7:12 mark. Also encountering first-half foul problems were Thomas and Johnson, who finished the game with four each.

Thomas said the early fouls on him, Booker and Johnson “hurt us a lot. We got up early in the first half and those fouls hurt. But we have to play through that.”

But with the score tied at 30 at intermission, the second 20 minutes (and the win) were there for the taking – and the Utes quickly took advantage. They scored the second half’s first nine points for a 39-30 lead. CU took a timeout to regroup with 17:26 to play, but promptly turned it over and Wright converted a traditional three-point play for the nine-point lead.

Scott called the turnovers “something we’ve talked about a lot. It’s inexcusable. We have to go back to the drawing board.” He also said Wright, the Pac-12 leader in steals, “got us a couple of times and made some easy baskets. I thought that was a key.”

CU finally got its first second-half points on a left-handed Scott hook with 16:20 left. But by then the Utes were up 39-32 and about to pull away for good.
Utah pushed its advantage to 45-32 on a straightaway 3-pointer by Loveridge with 13:52 to play and extended its lead to as many as 17 twice in the final 5 minutes.
Boyle said a lack of mental toughness continues to degrade the Buffs’ effort and that a glance at “every league in America” will show the top teams as the top defensive teams – and that’s where the Buffs are falling short.

“Our mental toughness – when things don’t go well for us on offense . . . it has to get better,” he said, adding a few corrections have to be made “to get it right. We don’t have to change the makeup . . . we’re not playing consistently enough and mentally tough enough.”

CU finishes out the regular season with road games next week at Stanford (Wednesday) and California (Saturday). The Pac-12 Tournament is March 12-15 in Las Vegas.