Posts tagged New Mexico
CU tennis is building a head of steam with recent victories
0April 2, 2013
CU is in the ITA College Tennis Rankings for the first time in the regular season since April 2010.
The Buffaloes, ranked No. 75, join nine other Pac-12 Conference teams in the rankings. Colorado holds a 7-11 overall, 2-5 Pac-12 record, tying for sixth in conference standings. With three matches left in the season, the Buffs have already matched their 2011-12 win total. 
“It’s exciting for the program, and it’s exciting for the players,” CU head coach Nicole Kenneally said. “It’s been a few years since we’ve been included in the national rankings. I think it’s a testament to all the hard work the players have put in during the fall semester and in this spring semester. It shows their continued engagement in the process of learning and getting better in every match and every practice. I’m excited for the program.”
The most recently the Buffs have been ranked in the regular season was when they concluded the 2009-10 regular season against No. 19 Texas. The Buffs went into the match ranked No. 68 and finished the season with an 11-13 overall, 3-8 Big 12 record and a No. 72 ranking.
The Buffs have marked several milestones this year. They earned their first ever Pac-12 win on March 10 with a 4-2 win over Arizona, breaking a 26-match regular season conference losing streak. This season, the Buffs have taken down two out of eight ranked opponents. CU beat No. 62 Stephen F. Austin 6-1 on February 2, marking their first win over a ranked opponent since the then-ranked No. 55 Buffs defeated No. 71 Denver on February 1, 2010.
After facing a tough stretch versus ranked Pac-12 teams, the Buffs got a big win over No. 59 Oregon last weekend. The 5-2 victory over the Ducks marks the highest ranked opponent the Buffs have defeated since beating then-ranked No. 46 New Mexico on February 7, 2009. All nine of CU’s most recent opponents have either been ranked, had at least one ranked player or both (as is the case for six of the teams, including Oregon). Of the teams the Buffs have faced this season, 11 hold a place the current rankings, with five ranked in the top 25.
The Buffs conclude their regular season against stiff competition. CU takes on No. 70 Washington State at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 5 and No. 45 Washington at 10 a.m. on Sunday, April 7. They end the season against No. 63 Utah at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 20. All matches will be held at the CU South Campus Tennis Complex unless weather moves play indoors.
CU media release
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CU women’s tennis gets an historical win
0March 29, 2013
BOULDER – The CU women won their second game against a PAC 12 opponent in three years..
“I’m really proud of the players,” CU head coach Nicole Kenneally said. “We came out and competed. It’s been a tough couple of weeks of competition that we’ve had, playing the top four schools in our conference, who were really, really tough. I think we all learned from that, and it really helped us today. I think they really bounced back well. We’ve got three more teams coming into town over the next couple of weeks and we look forward to having those teams here.”
The Buffaloes pick up their first win over a ranked opponent since taking down No. 62 Stephen F. Austin 6-1 on February 2. This marks the highest ranked opponent the Buffs have defeated since beating then-ranked No. 46 New Mexico on February 7, 2009. All nine of CU’s most recent opponents have either been ranked, had at least one ranked player or both (as is the case for six of the teams, including Oregon). The Buffs are now 2-6 against ranked opponents this season, and an impressive 5-2 at home, opening home outdoor play against the Ducks.
“It means something when players don’t necessarily play their best and still win and find a way,” Kenneally said. “I think we did that in several positions today in singles and doubles. That’s what I’m most proud of because it just shows that mentally they’ve taken a step forward, which is great.”
Colorado improves to 7-11 overall, 2-5 Pac-12, matching last year’s overall win total, and marking the first time since the 2009-10 season that the Buffs won at least two conference matches. Oregon, having been ranked in the ITA top-75 in all but two matches this spring, falls to 11-5, 1-4 Pac-12. CU leads the overall series 10-6.
The Buffs sprang into action early, taking the doubles point. The freshman duo of Dhany Quevedo and Mazy Watrous got its first ever win as a pair, besting Hughes/Hager 8-1. Juniors Winde Janssens and Carla Manzi Tenorio continue to be a power for the Buffs, earning their 10th win together this season with an 8-5 win over Metzger/Neubert.
After facing seven straight ranked opponents, Julyette Steur claimed a win over the eighth, defeating No. 102 Nicole Long, who has lost only twice this spring, 6-1, 6-1 for her 14th win of the season. All but one of her wins this spring have been in straight sets. The victory was Steur’s first over a ranked opponent since she beat then-ranked No. 104 McCall Jones of UCLA on March 23, 2012.
Janssens and Manzi Tenorio each earned their 40th career singles win with victories in straight sets. Janssens bested Patricia Skowronski 6-1, 6-3. Janssens leads the Buffs with 16 wins this season, including four in-conference. Manzi Tenorio got her 14th win of the season and her second over a conference opponent with a solid 6-4, 7-6 win over Lana Buttner.
Senior Erin Sanders once again clinched the match for the Buffs, defeating Pascale Neubert 6-3, 6-3. Sanders now has seven wins this season, including two major conference victories.
The Buffs return to action next weekend as the season draws to a close. CU takes on Washington State at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 5 and Washington at 10 a.m. on Sunday, April 7.
from CU SPORTS PRESS RELEASE!!!
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CU in distant 2nd at NCAA Championship in Vermont
0March 8, 2013
The CU ski has little chance of overtaking the lead with only two events
remaining.
Defending champion Vermont has now led after all three days, and owns a 54-point edge over the Buffaloes. After Friday’s always-risky slalom races, the Catamounts ended the day with 564 points, followed by Colorado (510), Denver (484) and Utah (481). Those four schools remain in the hunt for the title, as fifth place New Mexico (449) and sixth place Dartmouth (405) are likely too far back of UVM to make up that much ground.
Vermont has recent history on its side, as the leader at the midway point has won six straight and 10 of the last 12 times, and schools leading after three days (six events) have won 16 of the last 18. Two of the last three champions, Denver (2010) and Colorado (2011) both led wire-to-wire.
UVM’s 54-point lead is the smallest heading into the final two events since 2009, when it led DU by two points, but the Pioneers overhauled them and won by 56.5 points. The only other school to rally on the final day in the last 20 years was Vermont in 1994, as the Catamounts started in third place and down by 49 points before rallying for a 21-point win.
CU ski coach Richard Rokos
“It was a tough day, as tough as slalom can be,” CU head coach Richard Rokos said. “There are two approaches, go out and give everything like Utah and Denver did, or ski conservatively and hope that everybody else will have bad luck or ski the same way. UVM knows this place well and they took advantage. With us being just behind them, our kids finished six runs diligently, it’s part of the deal. Unfortunately we didn’t catch enough points to catch up or even maintain with Vermont, so they’re still ahead of us.”
Denver won the women’s slalom with 101 points, followed by Dartmouth (90), Utah (86), Vermont (84), New Mexico (78), New Hampshire (67) and then Colorado (seventh, 59). In the men’s slalom, Middlebury won the day with 103, ahead of New Hampshire (95), New Mexico and Vermont (91) and the Buffs (82).
“I have a fundamental problem with the format, we used to throw out three results and use 21 of 24 scores, and that would allow kids to risk a little more in slalom,” he continued. “Now every single point goes in your pocket and you can’t hike and everything counts. And before that, you skied four and counted three. You could survive a crash, a hike, a bad run, etc., and the deeper teams had a little comfort zone.”
Denver freshman Kristine Haugen made it a sweep here, as she claimed the women’s slalom Friday to add to her win in the giant slalom on Wednesday; she is the first to win both since CU’s Lucie Zikova in 2008, and the fifth to do it since 1983 when the NCAA first sponsored women in the sport.
All of CU’s women are freshmen as well, with Jessica Honkonen posting CU’s best finish, her 1:40.78 time placing her 16th, but well behind Haugen’s time of 1:37.97. Brooke Wales finished 18th (1:41.16) and Thea Grosvold 27th (1:42.20). It marked just the second time in the last 14 national slaloms that CU didn’t have at least one finisher in the top 10, the other year coming in 2009.
“We were on the defensive today, we came in without a huge deficit to UVM, we wanted to maintain that difference, but I think we probably held back a little bit too much today,” Wales said. “Hopefully (CU) just finishing with decent runs will pay off and the ‘Nordies’ will get it done. Some other teams hurt themselves by not finishing some racers. But know that tomorrow we will be the No. 1 fans out there tomorrow getting them through the finish line.”
“I told them to make sure to finish, the girls maybe took it a little too much to heart,” Rokos pondered. “They skied fast and clean, it’s hard to compromise. On one hand, you ask them to ski fast, on the other if they don’t finish, it hurts the team. It’s a very hard compromise, and contradictory to what ski racers do.”
The men were led by freshman Kasper Hietanen, who earned second-team All-America honors in tying for eighth place with a 1:40.28 time; New Mexico’s Joonas Rasanen won the top spot on the podium with a two-run clocking of 1:38.96.
“I had a little trouble on the second run, but I was able to make it in the top 10, the top eight, so it was good,” Hietanen said. “It was a little different than the first run, the sun came up, it was softer and slicker, I had a great run until a mistake right before the last flat. That probably cost me a few spots, but all in all it was a decent run. I was going for it, but also I was careful to save points. Even taking it carefully, I had a little mistake, but I kept it in there.”
“Kasper’s had one mistake that cost him probably being in third or even second, but it was still to finish eighth, especially in your first NCAA slalom,” Rokos said. “If you look at the podium, there were no favorites, they were all hiking.”
Freshman Henrik Gunnarsson finished 13th (1:40.76), while junior Andreas Haug tied for 16th (1:41.62).
The mass start freestyle races will finish off the NCAA meet on Saturday, with the women’s 15-kilometer at 8:00 a.m. MST, and the men’s 20k race following at 10:00 a.m.
“The Nordic races are a little more predictable, which is obvious after today here,” Rokos said. “We’ll see how we do tomorrow, we’re not out of it but need to have a great day. We’ll do everything to get every kid through the finish line in the fastest possible way, and we’ll be there cheering them on as much as we possibly can.”
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CU study: Southwest regional warming likely cause of pinyon pine cone decline
0February 12, 2013
Creeping climate change in the Southwest appears to be having a negative effect on pinyon pine reproduction, a finding with implications for wildlife species sharing the same woodland ecosystems, says a University of Colorado Boulder-led study.
The new study showed that pinyon pine seed cone production declined by an average of about 40 percent at nine study sites in New Mexico and northwestern Oklahoma over the past four decades, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Miranda Redmond, who led the study. The biggest declines in pinyon pine seed cone reproduction were at the higher elevation research sites experiencing more dramatic warming relative to lower elevations, said Redmond of CU’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.
“We are finding significant declines in pinyon pine cone production at many of our study sites,” said Redmond. “The biggest declines in cone production we measured were in areas with greater increases in temperatures over the past several decades during the March to October growing season.”
The cones in which the pinyon seeds are produced are initiated two years prior to seed maturity, and research suggests the environmental stimulus for cone initiation is unseasonably low temperatures during the late summer, said Redmond. Between 1969 and 2009, unseasonably low temperatures in late summer decreased in the study areas, likely inhibiting cone initiation and development.
The study is one of the first to examine the impact of climate change on tree species like pinyon pines that, instead of reproducing annually, shed vast quantities of cones every few years during synchronous, episodic occurrences known as “masting” events. Redmond said such masting in the pinyon pine appears to occur every three to seven years, resulting in massive “bumper crops” of cones covering the ground.
In the new Ecosphere study, the researchers compared two 10-year sequences of time. In addition to showing that total pinyon pine cone production during the 2003-2012 decade had declined from the 1969-1978 decade in the study areas, the team found the production of cones during masting events also declined during that period.
Some scientists believe masting events evolved to produce a big surplus of nut-carrying cones — far too many for wildlife species to consume in a season — making it more likely the nuts eventually will sprout into pinyon pine seedlings, she said. Others have suggested masting events occur during favorable climate conditions and/or to increase pollination efficiency. “Right now we really don’t know what drives them,” Redmond said.
“Across a range of forested ecosystems we are observing widespread mortality events due to stressors such as changing climate, drought, insects and fire,” said CU’s Barger. “This study provides evidence that increasing air temperatures may be influencing the ability of a common and iconic western U.S. tree, pinyon pine, to reproduce. We would predict that declines in pinyon pine cone production may impact the long-term viability of these tree populations.”
Wildlife biologists say pinyon-juniper woodlands are popular with scores of bird and mammal species ranging from black-chinned hummingbirds to black bears. A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona estimated that 150 Clark’s Nutcrackers cached roughly 5 million pinyon pine nuts in a single season, benefiting not only the birds themselves but also the pines whose nuts were distributed more widely for possible germination.
For the new study, Redmond revisited nine pinyon pine study sites scattered throughout New Mexico and Oklahoma that had been studied previously in 1978 by Forcella. Both Forcella and Redmond were able to document pinyon pine masting years by counting small, concave blemishes known as “abscission scars” on individual tree branches that appeared after the cones have been dropped, she said.
Since each year in the life of a pinyon pine tree is marked by a “whorl” — a single circle of branches extending around a tree trunk — the researchers were able to bracket pinyon pine reproductive activity in the nine study areas for the 1969-1978 decade and 2003-2012 decade, which were then compared.
Pinyon pines take three growing seasons, or about 26 months, to produce mature cones from the time of cone initiation. Low elevation conifers including pinyon pines grow in water-limited environments and have been shown to have higher cone output during cool and/or wet summers, said Redmond. In addition to the climate-warming trend under way in the Southwest, the 2002-03 drought caused significant mortality in pinyon pine forests, Redmond said.
“Miranda’s ideas and accompanying results will be of value to ecologists and land managers in the deserts of the Southwest and beyond,” said Forcella, now a research agronomist in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. “The work is evidence that the University of Colorado continues to cultivate a cadre of high-caliber graduate students for which it rightfully can take tremendous pride.”
Pinyon nuts, the Southwest’s only commercial source of edible pine seeds today, were dietary staples of indigenous Americans going back millennia.
For more information on CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department visit http://ebio.colorado.edu.
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CU Women’s Balance Keys Lopsided Win Against Oregon Ducks
0February 10, 2013
Story by Caryn Maconi, CUBuffs.com
BOULDER – Four players scored in double figures Sunday afternoon to lead the No. 21/25 Colorado women’s basketball team to an 84-59 Pac-12 Conference romp past Oregon at the Coors Events Center.
The 84-point total ties the highest point total of the season for the Buffs, as they scored 84 against New Mexico in non-conference play. It is the fourth time the Buffs have scored more than 80 this season and the first so far in Pac-12 play.
With the win, Colorado improves to 18-5 overall and 7-5 in the Pac-12. CU’s seven conference wins to date are more than the team recorded in total last season (6-12). The Buffs had not won seven or more conference matchups in a season since finishing the 2004 Big 12 schedule at 11-5.
Junior guard Brittany Wilson led CU with 16 points, while senior guard Chucky Jeffery added 15 points and 15 rebounds. Jeffery’s totals marked her 27th career double-double and just the fourth time she has recorded 15 of each.
“To be able to score just as much as you rebound, that’s pretty amazing,” sophomore guard Lexy Kresl said of Jeffery’s performance. Kresl and junior center Rachel Hargis added 12 points and 10, respectively, while four other players scored at least six.
Hargis said her team prepared specifically to face Oregon’s zone defense, something the Buffs haven’t seen much of from opponents this season.
“Coach talked to us about moving the ball well, just keeping it moving and not holding the ball as much,” Hargis said. “Playing a zone you don’t really expect to score that much inside, but coach kept talking to us about attacking and cutting to open areas, and that’s what I focused on.”
Colorado started the first half slow, allowing Oregon to go on a 10-3 run in the first 3:15 and record three blocks in the first five minutes.
“B-Will” played her best game against a PAC- 12 team
“I didn’t think we were being very aggressive, we were letting them score however they wanted to score with not very many passes,” said CU head coach Linda Lappe. “We didn’t look like we were ready for what they were bringing, so we just needed to take a deep breath and get back out there.”
Once the Buffs had regrouped and gotten a chance to assess Oregon’s top scorers, they made the necessary adjustments on defense to stop the Ducks’ streak.
“We recognized who was going to be scoring and who was going to be shooting,” Kresl said. “We definitely tried to pick up the pressure on them more and play them a little bit closer.”
Rachel Hargis played one of her best games this season–with 12 points and 10 rebounds
And with a more efficient defense came a ramped-up offense, as Jeffery and Wilson hit three consecutive three-pointers to regain a four-point lead with 13:40 left in the half.
Oregon didn’t give in easily and even briefly took the lead again with 7:45 on the clock. CU’s offense responded with force, though, outscoring Oregon 20-6 in the final 7:20 to enter intermission with a 43-31 advantage.
That momentum more than carried through halftime, as the Buffs went on an immediate 10-0 run to go up 20 (53-33). The Ducks were unable to recover, and with three minutes remaining a Hargis basket put the Buffs up 27 (80-53).
Colorado would maintain that energy until the final buzzer.
“It was a good game, we shared the ball a lot as a team, had 17 assists,” Wilson said. “We hit open shots, played great defense, so I think it was a team effort … I don’t think you could ask for anything more.”
Eleven Colorado players saw time on the court at some point Sunday, including freshman guard Kyleesha Weston and walk-on freshman guard Alexus Atchley. Atchley scored her first two career points in the last minute of the game.
“Anytime you can get players experience is important, especially young players,” Lappe said. “Especially when you play that tempo, you have to play ten players to stay fresh. We knew it was going to be a fast-paced game today, and everybody who came in just kept that pace going.”
CU shot 44.9 percent from the field, recording 17 assists and just 12 turnovers. Meanwhile, the Ducks were held to 38.6 percent from the field and recorded 21 turnovers.
Another highlight for the Colorado defense its steals, recording 16 compared to Oregon’s six. The Buffs have recorded 54 combined steals in the last four games, something Lappe credits to an increasing toughness on the defensive end.
“It is a lot of steals. It’s aggressiveness, it’s positioning, it’s understanding where you are supposed to be defensively and helping each other out,” Lappe said. “Defense is the bread and butter, and if we continue to do that we will be a really good team.”
The CU women hit the road once again next week, playing at Arizona on Friday (7 p.m., MST) and at Arizona State on Sunday (2 p.m., MST).
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Buffs Crush Lobos, Await Date With Stanford
0December 30, 2012
CU women’s basketball team 11-0 going into PAC 12 competition
Story by B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor, CUBuffs.com
BOULDER – The University of Colorado women’s basketball team easily disposed of New Mexico 84-39 Saturday at the Coors Events Center, finishing non-conference play unbeaten and presenting coach Linda Lappe with her 100th career win.
With a date against No. 1 Stanford looming next week in their Pac-12 Conference opener, the No. 23 Buffaloes improved to 11-0 for the second consecutive season. Lappe, meanwhile, won for the 50th time as CU’s coach. She is 100-66 overall and 50-30 in her third season in Boulder.
Methodically taking care of business before the top-ranked Cardinal visits Friday (8 p.m.), the Buffs rolled to a 39-21 halftime lead and outscored the Lobos (8-5) 17-2 to open the second half.
CU sophomore guard Lexy Kresl tied a career-high with 20 points, hitting all five of her three-point attempts and tying a school record. Also in double figures for the Buffs were redshirt freshman Arielle Roberson (18), senior Chucky Jeffery (11) and sophomore Jen Reese (10).
Jeffery flirted with the third triple-double of her career. Despite sitting sat out the final 6 minutes, she finished with eight assists and eight rebounds to go with her 11 points.
In rolling to their 18-point halftime lead, the Buffs never trailed. They jumped ahead 3-0 on a three-pointer by Brittany Wilson and kept on cruising. Kresl led all first-half scorers, hitting all three of her three-point attempts on the way to 12 points and surpassing her previous high this season.
The Buffs shot 51.7 percent (15-for-29) from the field in the first half and hit five of their nine long-range attempts (55.6 percent). And they demons on defense, posting a season-high 11 steals, forcing 14 turnovers and limiting the Lobos to 34.8 percent shooting from the field (8-of-23).
The Buffs shot 50.8 percent for the game (32-of-63) and held the Lobos to 30.2 percent (16-of-53). CU outrebounded the visitors 42-31, owned a 40-16 advantage in the paint and converted 23 UNM turnovers into 28 points. The Buffs committed 13 turnovers, but the Lobos got only nine points from those errors.
CU – and Kresl – didn’t slow down to open the second half. With Kresl scoring eight points, the Buffs opened with a 17-2 run and quickly went up 56-23 – their largest lead of the afternoon to that point.
They kept on pushing, cruising toward their unbeaten start and their coach’s milestone win. With 6:44 to play, Roberson’s pair of free throws opened a 72-30 advantage.
With their largest lead reaching 47 in the final minute, it was almost time for the Buffs to begin thinking about the Cardinal.
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Colorado Moves UP Two Spots To No. 23 In AP Poll
0December 24, 2012
BOULDER – The University of Colorado moved up two spots to No. 23 in the Associated Press Women’s Basketball Top 25 poll, released Monday.
Colorado received 156 votes – up from 99 last week – to make its second-straight appearance and highest ranking since also reaching No. 23 on Jan. 7, 2008. The Buffaloes are 10-0 and one of only seven remaining unbeaten teams in NCAA Division I – all of which reside in the AP top 25.
The Buffaloes have a long history of rankings in the AP poll, dating back to the 1980-81 season. This week’s ranking marks the 160th time Colorado has appeared in the AP poll, trailing only Stanford, USC and UCLA among Pac-12 Conference schools.
The USA Today Sports Coaches poll is scheduled to be released on Tuesday. The Buffaloes haven’t been ranked in that poll since April 2004. CU received 13 votes from the coaches’ poll last week. CU received votes from the coaches poll during the squad’s four-week AP run in 2007-08, but never reached the top 25.
Colorado will return to action against the University of New Mexico on Saturday, Dec. 29, at 2:30 p.m. at the Coors Events Center. Saturday is a doubleheader with the CU men taking the floor against the University of Hartford at 12 p.m.
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Buffs Hold Off No. 8 Cardinals At The Wire
0December 15, 2012
by BG Brooks, Contributing Editor, CUBuffs.com
BOULDER – The buildup was big, but Colorado’s effort was bigger. The CU women’s basketball team took on – and took down – No. 8 Louisville 70-66 on Friday night at the Coors Events Center.
But it wasn’t easy for the Buffaloes to remain unbeaten (9-0).
CU led by as many as 13 (64-51) in the final 3 minutes before Louisville’s full-court pressure sparked a 10-0 run and allowed the Cardinals to close to 68-66 in the final half-minute.
Jen Reese’s last second score clinched the game
But Jen Reese scored on a critical put-back after two missed free throws by Brittany Wilson with 11.1 seconds remaining to give the Buffs their first win against a Top Ten opponent since the 2002 CU team defeated No. 5 Stanford in the NCAA’s Sweet 16. Buffs coach Linda Lappe was a junior on that squad.
The Buffs had four players in double figures, topped by Chucky Jeffery’s 22. Arielle Roberson added 13 and Reese and Wilson had 11 each. CU center Rachel Hargis contributed seven points and a career-high seven blocks.
Louisville (9-2) was led by Antonita Slaughter’s 19. Cardinals’ leading scorer Shoni Schimmel was held to four.
The Buffs are off until Saturday, Dec. 22 when they host Utah Valley (1:30 p.m.). They close non-conference play a week later against New Mexico (2:30 p.m., Coors Events Center).
Jeffery scored the game’s first basket to give CU a 2-0 lead, but the Buffs trailed for almost the next 10 minutes. The good news: They never let the Cardinals get more than a five-point lead before they made their move to go ahead on a 11-0 run that put them up 23-16.
Roberson scored five points during that spurt, with Jeffery and Lexy Kresl each adding a three-pointer.
Louisville closed the gap to three (23-20) before CU surged again, this time riding Jeffery’s five points and an inside basket by Rachel Hargis on the way to a 7-2 run that gave the Buffs their biggest early lead – 30-22.
Lappe liberally subbed her posts and it paid off. Hargis contributed her best half of the season, hitting three of four field goals, blocking a season-high three shots, collecting two rebounds and getting one steal.
She was on the receiving end of a Jeffery pass in the half’s closing seconds, scoring a layup that put the Buffs up 36-30 at intermission. Jeffery led all first-half scorers with 13 points and was the only player on either team in double figures.
The Buffs held the Cardinals to 39.1 percent from the field (9-for-23) and shut out Schimmel, who entered the game with a team-best 12.1 points a game. Mostly, the job of defending her fell to Brittany Wilson – and “B-Wil” stayed as close as fuzz on a peach.
Louisville entered the game with a plus-9.1 rebounding edge, but was out-boarded 19-12 in the first 20 minutes. CU forced the visitors into 10 first-half turnovers, but matched that total.
The Buffs started the last half in an offensive stupor, not getting their first points until Roberson hit a pair of free throws (38-34) with 15:36 remaining. She followed those with a basket in the lane to push CU ahead again by six (40-34).
But Monique Reid answered with a pair of quick inside buckets to cut the Buffs’ advantage to two (40-38). The Cardinals then pulled to within 41-40 on a bucket by Shawnta Dyer. But the Buffs temporarily held them at bay.
At the 10-minute mark, CU was up 48-43, but a three-pointer by Slaughter trimmed the lead to 48-46. The Buffs held that two-point advantage until Brittany Wilson hit both ends of a one-and-one to up CU’s lead to 50-46 with 7:18 to play.
The Cardinals weren’t done – and the Buffs weren’t even close. A pair of Slaughter free throws pulled them to 50-48 before Jen Reese banked in a short jumper for a 52-48 CU lead with 5:22 showing.
That started a 10-0 Buffs run that produced their biggest lead of the night — 60-49 – with 3:33 remaining.
Here’s how it happened: Jeffery followed with an acrobatic layup to make it 54-48 with just under 5 minutes left, Reese got another basket, and Kresl and Brittany Wilson scored on fast-break lay-ins. The Buffs were up by 11 points, the Cardinals were staggering and the CEC was rocking.
But Louisville’s 10-0 run and a frantic finish were on the way.
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CU Boulder study finds racial ‘hierarchy of bias’ drives decision to shoot armed, unarmed suspects
0October 24, 2012
Police officers and students exhibit an apparent “hierarchy of bias” in making a split-second decision whether to shoot suspects who appear to be wielding a gun or, alternatively, a benign object like a cell phone, research conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder and San Diego State University has found.
Both the police and student subjects were most likely to shoot at blacks, then Hispanics, then whites and finally, in a case of what might be called a positive bias, Asians, researchers found.
In the first study of its kind, Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park and Charles M. Judd of CU-Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Melody Sadler of San Diego State University examined how police and a group of undergraduate subjects decide whether to shoot or not to shoot “suspects” in a multi-ethnic environment.
“Most studies on the subject of stereotyping and prejudice look at two (ethnic) groups, usually in isolation. It’s always one group against another group,” said Correll, a CU graduate who joined the faculty in August after a stint at the University of Chicago.
“But as the country becomes more ethnically diverse, it’s more and more important to start thinking about how we process racial and ethnic cues in a multicultural environment,” he said.
As with previous studies into the question, data were gathered from subjects playing a “first person shooter” video game, in which figures of varying ethnicity — Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic and African-American — pop up, either “armed” with a weapon or another benign object, such as a cell phone.
Participants — 69 CU-Boulder undergraduates and 254 police officers — had to make quick decisions as to which figures posed a “threat” and shoot them. The police officers were recruited from two-day training seminars in Florida, New Mexico and Washington and represented numerous jurisdictions from 11 states.
The research demonstrates how persistent cultural stereotypes are, Correll said. Even students who displayed little bias when interviewed demonstrated otherwise when faced with a split-second decision.
“I may not believe it personally, but I am exposed to stereotypes constantly through media or social networks … (such as) the idea that young black men are dangerous,” he said. “Those associations can have an influence on my behavior even if I don’t believe them.”
The study found that police were considerably more accurate than students at correctly identifying a genuinely threatening suspect, as opposed to those brandishing a cell phone or wallet, perhaps a reflection of training. But officers were still influenced by the target’s race — an influence that may derive from the officers’ “contacts, attitudes and stereotypes,” Correll said.
For example, police who endorsed more violent stereotypes about Hispanics and those who overestimated the prevalence of violent crime in their districts demonstrated more bias to shoot Hispanic targets. That raises the question of whether police are responding to real-world threats — and whether that means some ethnic groups really are more likely to be armed and dangerous than others.
“That is a very sensitive question, whether or not (police officers’) reactions are based on some kind of truth. Is this police officers responding to reality on the ground? The short answer is, we don’t know,” Correll said. “But this research almost demands that we ask that question.”
The researchers’ recent findings were published in the Journal of Social Issues. The work was funded by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.
In 2007, Correll (then at the University of Chicago), Sadler (then at CU-Boulder), Park and Judd collaborated with the Denver Police Department on a widely cited study that found police officers were less influenced than the general public by racial bias and less likely than the general population to make a decision to shoot at African-American suspects wielding a benign object.
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CU study says Romney will be Pres
0October 4, 2012
Updated election forecasting model
still points to Romney win,
University of Colorado study says
An update to an election forecasting model announced by two University of Colorado professors in August continues to project that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election.
According to their updated analysis, Romney is projected to receive 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes. President Barack Obama is expected to receive 208 votes — down five votes from their initial prediction — and short of the 270 needed to win.
The new forecast by political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver is based on more recent economic data than their original Aug. 22 prediction. The model itself did not change.
“We continue to show that the economic conditions favor Romney even though many polls show the president in the lead,” Bickers said. “Other published models point to the same result, but they looked at the national popular vote, while we stress state-level economic data.”
While many election forecast models are based on the popular vote, the model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions. They included economic data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Their original prediction model was one of 13 published in August in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. The journal has published collections of presidential election models every four years since 1996, but this year the models showed the widest split in outcomes, Berry said. Five predicted an Obama win, five forecast a Romney win, and three rated the 2012 race as a toss-up.
The Bickers and Berry model includes both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors. The new analysis includes unemployment rates from August rather than May, and changes in per capita income from the end of June rather than March. It is the last update they will release before the election.
Of the 13 battleground states identified in the model, the only one to change in the update was New Mexico — now seen as a narrow victory for Romney. The model foresees Romney carrying New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Obama is predicted to win Michigan and Nevada.
In Colorado, which Obama won in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 53.3 percent of the vote to Obama’s 46.7 percent, with only the two major parties considered.
While national polls continue to show the president in the lead, “the president seems to be reaching a ceiling at or below 50 percent in many of these states,” Bickers said. “Polls typically tighten up in October as people start paying attention and there are fewer undecided voters.”
The state-by-state economic data used in their model have been available since 1980. When these data were applied retroactively to each election year, the model correctly classifies all presidential election winners, including the two years when independent candidates ran strongly: 1980 and 1992. It also correctly estimates the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the election through the Electoral College.
In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors analyzed changes in personal income from the time of the prior presidential election. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates, while Republicans are held more responsible for fluctuations in personal income.
Accordingly — and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time — each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.
In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had a statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention, the home state of the vice president or the partisanship of state governors.
The authors also provided caveats. Their model had an average error rate of five states and 28 Electoral College votes. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall in an unexpected direction due to factors not included in the model.
“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,” they wrote.
All 13 election models can be viewed on the PS: Political Science & Politics website at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PSC.
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CU BUFF GOLFERS FINISH SECOND AT UNM TUCKER INVITATIONAL
0September 29, 2012
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The University of Colorado men’s golf team moved up one spot into a second place finish but couldn’t catch host New Mexico as the Buffaloes finished runner-up for just the third time here as the 58th Annual New Mexico Tucker Invitational was completed here Saturday.
The Buffaloes entered the day in third place, 15 shots back of the Lobos, and pulled to within 11 strokes early; but the home team got hot in the middle of the round and pulled away, finishing with a 15-under par 848 team score for a 29-stroke victory over the Buffaloes. Colorado posted a 14-over team score of 878, while San Francisco, in second after two rounds, slipped to third with a 22-over 886 tally.
Colorado is one of three schools to have played in all 58 Tucker invitationals (along with host New Mexico and New Mexico State); the Buffs have never won here but did also finish second in 1956 and 1981.
Senior Jason Burstyn and sophomore David Oraee led the Buffaloes here, as both tied for seventh with 1-over par 217 scores on the 7,578-yard, par-72 UNM Championship golf course.
Burstyn closed his efforts with a 4-over 76, scoring two birdies and six bogeys with 10 pars; his 12 birdies led cu for the week as he posted his third top 10 finish in four meets this fall.
Oraee had three birdies, nine pars and six bogeys en route to his final round 75 (3-over), as he duplicated his finish earlier in the week at CU’s Mark Simpson Invitational. He also has three top 10 efforts this season.
Senior Beau Schoolcraft recorded the team’s best individual score for the second straight round, and was the only Buff under par in the final round with a 1-under 71; he played a solid 18 with three birdies and 13 pars against just bogeys to finish up with a 4-over 220 score which tied him for 13th place (his third top 20 finish this fall). He had eight birdies, a team-best 34 pars and 12 bogeys for the tourney.
Senior Derek Fribbs tied for 38th with a 75 Saturday for a 10-over 226 score. He wrapped things up with two birdies, 12 pars, three bogeys and a double. Freshman Philip Juel-Berg tied for 53rd after fashioning a 2-over 74 in the final round for a 14-over 230. He had two birdies, 12 pars and four bogeys Saturday.
Junior Johnny Hayes competed here as an individual, closing things out with a 5-over 77 (one birdie, 11 par, six bogeys). That also gave him a 14-over 230 total, thus tying Juel-Berg with a 53rd place finish. He had CU’s lone eagle here this weekend with four birdies and 30 pars.
“We got off to a good start and made up a couple of shots, but the New Mexico just hit the gas and ran away from everyone,” coach Roy Edwards said. “We knew the guys would be a little tired from a pretty long week (CU’s tournament was last Monday and Tuesday), and we kind of ran out of gas and didn’t play very well on the back nine. But it’s a credit to the guys to still go out there and shoot the fourth lowest round of the day and also move into second place. We still matched the highest we’ve ever finished here, and it had been three decades since we finished this high.
“I don’t think any team in the country would have beaten New Mexico today. So we’re excited about that.”
CU’s 7-over 295 score on Saturday trailed New Mexico’s 281, the best team round of the tournament, and Minnesota and UTEP’s rounds (294) by a single shot.
New Mexico’s Gavin Green recorded a final round 69 for a 7-under 209 total to win by one stroke over Minnesota’s Erik Van Rooyen, who closed with a 71 and a 210 score.
The Buffaloes, now 37-2 against Division I competition in three tournaments this fall, are off for two weeks until Oct. 8-9, when they will travel to Portland to take part in the Pac-12 Conference Fall Preview.
“Overall, it was a good, solid week for the Buffaloes,” Edwards added. “While we didn’t play our best today, Beau turned in a quality round and Jason and David had solid tournaments.”
BUFFALO INDIVIDUALS (*—played as an individual)
T7. Jason Burstyn………………………………….. 68-73-76—217
T7. David Oraee……………………………………… 69-73-75—217
T13. Beau Schoolcraft……………………………… 77-72-71—220
T38. Derek Fribbs…………………………………….. 75-76-75—226
T53. Philip Juel-Berg………………………………… 79-77-74—230
T53. *Johnny Hayes………………………………… 75-78-77—230
TOP 5 INDIVIDUALS
1. Gavin Green, New Mexico……………………. 71-69-69—209
2. Erik Van Rooyen, Minnesota……………….. 66-73-71—210
3. John Catlin, New Mexico……………………… 76-69-67—212
4. Cory McElyea, San Francisco……………… 69-69-75—213
5. Pete Fernandez, UC-Irvine…………………… 70-69-75—214
TEAM SCORES
1. New Mexico………………………………….. 283-285-281—849
2. Colorado…………………………………….. 289-294-295—878
3. San Francisco………………………………. 297-284-305—886
4. Brigham Young…………………………….. 298-293-299—890
4. Minnesota……………………………………. 288-308-294—890
4. Baylor………………………………………….. 296-290-304—890
7. Texas-El Paso………………………………. 299-298-294—891
8. UC-Irvine……………………………………… 287-301-304—892
9. Arizona…………………………………………. 293-299-303—895
10. Utah…………………………………………….. 303-297-302—902
11. Texas-San Antonio……………………….. 301-299-305—905
12. New Mexico State…………………………. 304-299-305—908
13. Wyoming………………………………………. 308-292-310—910
14. Pepperdine…………………………………… 310-300-308—918
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100,000 Coloradans support an initiative to overturn Citizens United ruling
0August 6, 2012
by Ron Baird, news editor
in News
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Coloradans are fed up with corruption and have chosen to fight back. Today, more than 100,000 signatures are being turned in to state officials from citizens who support a statewide ballot initiative. Initiative 82 calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and get corporate and wealthy donor money out of our elections.
Our elected officials are supposed to serve the voters, not the highest bidder. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, Super PACs and other independent groups have spent huge amounts, in some cases outspending individual campaigns by a ratio of 2-to-1. Citizens United-enabled outside group spending, much of it secret, is devoted overwhelmingly to negative attack ads. The funds come from a very small cluster of people; a recent report found that just 47 people, each giving at least $1 million to Super PACs, accounted for more than 57 percent of the money raised by Super PACs during this current election cycle.
Along with millions around the country, the people of Colorado are courageously reclaiming their elections and making sure that democracy is for people, not for corporations. State legislatures have called for an amendment in California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont, Rhode Island and Maryland; more than 280 communities across the country have done the same. Public Citizen is proud to continue partnering with groups like Common Cause and U.S. PIRG, as well as the people of Colorado, as they push forward toward restoring our democracy.
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Ron Baird’s BLACK WIND a new thriller crime novel quality fiction
0May 26, 2012
Twenty seconds in a young man’s life has followed him like the shadow of a curse for 27 years. Did he crack under pressure or was it simply good reflexes? Aaron Hemingway still doesn’t know and nobody ever told him because the Army had buried it in a black hole.
But in an ironic twist of karma, it was those close to Aaron who paid the price. He sometimes questioned whether the two were connected, but after his 14-year-old daughter was taken hostage by a murder suspect and then watched three men die in her bloody rescue, that was pretty much the end of the argument Aaron, a former Denver cop and newspaper reporter.
So he became a recluse, avoiding people he cared about to protect them. But after three years of that, he was ready to eat his gun. Then an old friend called and offered him a temporary job as a small town deputy marshal. Knowing what was at risk, he nevertheless took the job.
Surprisingly, things seemed to be going well, including his handling of a couple of situations that were ripe for disaster. Then, in an unprovoked but not random attack, his dog was killed and his women friend was left in a coma with a gunshot wound to the head.
Aaron discovered the identity of the man behind the attack and, breaking a vow he made after Vietnam to never kill again unless in self-defense or to protect the innocent, he swore vengeance against the man. He only saw three outcomes: he would be killed, he would succeed and be arrested or he would get away with murder. In the Malpais lava fields of western New Mexico, he found that things are not always that simple.
Available at Book stores, Amazon and on Kindle for $9.00
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#CU study: Beetle hyper sex drive killing the forest
0March 15, 2012
Discovery of pine beetles breeding twice in a year
helps explain increasing damage, CU researchers say
Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, University of Colorado Boulder researchers have found.
Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, their study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven’t previously developed defenses.
These are among the key findings of Jeffry Mitton, a CU-Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Scott Ferrenberg, a graduate student in that department. The study is being published this month in The American Naturalist.
This exponential increase in the beetle population might help to explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska.
“This thing is immense,” Mitton said. The duo’s research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU’s Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.
“We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before,” Mitton said. “Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees” — in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.
These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.
Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, Mitton and Ferrenberg report. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.
The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived. In their study, Mitton and Ferrenberg emphasize this anomaly.
“While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago,” they write.
But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.
Ferrenberg had the idea to monitor the beetles at higher elevations partly because trees at lower elevations have been attacked by beetles for centuries and have developed some defenses.
Lodgepole pines at higher elevations tended to have a lower density of resin ducts, which transport resin, the sole defense against beetles. The number of resin ducts in a tree can be a “marker” for whether a tree has a higher or lower resistance to a beetle attack, Ferrenberg said.
The trees at higher elevations had not faced the same intensity of beetle attacks as those at lower elevations until temperatures warmed, and they have not faced pressures of natural selection exerted by attacking beetles. “The trees in that area are somewhat naïve in their response,” Ferrenberg said.
These data help explain why westbound motorists emerging from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 can look up, from 11,000 feet in elevation, and see beetle-killed trees. “We think we see some of the reason for the fact that this epidemic is so widespread,” Mitton said.
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
More on this story will appear in the next edition of Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/
Source: Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine
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Mini quakes to shimmy the Rio Grand rift
0January 11, 2012
SOME EARTHQUAKES EXPECTED ALONG RIO GRANDE RIFT
IN COLORADO AND NEW MEXICO, NEW STUDY SAYS
The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, but we will have some earthquakes,” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Anne Sheehan, also a fellow at CIRES. The study also involved collaborators from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University and the Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO. The Rio Grande Rift follows the path of the Rio Grande River from central Colorado roughly to El Paso before turning southeast toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Sheehan was not too surprised when a 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck about 9 miles west of Trinidad, Colo., in the vicinity of the Rio Grande Rift on Aug. 23, 2011. The quake was the largest in Colorado since 1967 and was felt from Fort Collins to Garden City, Kan.
Along the rift, spreading motion in the crust has led to the rise of magma — the molten rock material under Earth’s crust — to the surface, creating long, fault-bounded basins that are susceptible to earthquakes, said Sheehan, a study co-author and also associate director of the CIRES Solid Earth Sciences Division. The team studied the Rio Grande Rift region to assess the potential earthquake hazards.
Using Global Positioning System instruments at 25 sites in Colorado and New Mexico, the team tracked the rift’s miniscule movements from 2006 to 2011. “Questions we wanted to answer are whether the Rio Grande Rift is alive or dead, how is it deforming and whether it is opening or not,” said Sheehan.
The high-precision instrumentation has provided unprecedented data about the volcanic activity in the region. Previously, geologists had estimated the rift had spread apart by up to 2 inches or 5 millimeters each year, although the errors introduced by the scientific instruments were known to be significant. “The GPS used in this study has reduced the uncertainty dramatically,” Sheehan said.
Using the latest high-tech instrumentation, the scientists found an average strain rate of 1.2 “nanostrain” each year across the experimental area, the equivalent of about one-twentieth of an inch, or 1.2 millimeters, over a length of about 600 miles. “The rate is lower than we thought but it does exist,” Sheehan said.
The researchers also found the extensional deformation, or stretching, is not concentrated in a narrow zone centered on the Rio Grande Rift but is distributed broadly from the western edge of the Colorado Plateau well into the western Great Plains. “The surprising thing to come out of the study was that the strain was so spread out,” Sheehan said.
Results of the study are published in the January edition of the journal Geology.
The team plans to continue monitoring the Rio Grande Rift, probing whether the activity remains constant over time, said lead study author Henry Berglund of UNAVCO, who was a graduate student at CU-Boulder working at CIRES when he completed this portion of the research. Also, the team may attempt to determine vertical as well as horizontal activity in the region to tell whether the Rocky Mountains are still uplifting or not, Berglund said.
“Present-day measurements of deformation within continental interiors have been difficult to capture due to the typically slow rates of deformation within them,” Berglund said. “Now with the recent advances in space geodesy we are finding some very surprising results in these previously unresolved areas.”
As far as the potential for future earthquakes in the region, the study’s results are unequivocal, however. “The rift is still active,” Sheehan said.
The new study also is co-authored by CU-Boulder Associate Professor and CIRES Fellow Steven Nerem, Frederick Blume of UNAVCO, Anthony Lowry of Utah State University, Mousumi Roy of the University of New Mexico and Mark Murray of New Mexico Tech.
The National Science Foundation provided the funding for this study and the NSF-funded EarthScope program and UNAVCO provided instruments, equipment and engineering services. The Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO is a nonprofit, university-governed consortium that facilitates geosciences research and education.
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