Posts tagged shooting
New point-guard steers Buffs to win, barely
Feb 6th
Written By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – The Colorado Buffaloes and junior guard Askia Booker opened the second half on the run and appeared ready to race past Washington State on Wednesday night. Not so fast, said the Cougars’ DaVonte Lacy.
The Buffs held on – far from tightly – for a 68-63 Pac-12 Conference win that was secured – but barely – at the foul line in the final 1:05. CU hit only 8 of 14 free throws during that span, but Booker’s 6 of 8 – including a pair with 2 seconds remaining – kept the Buffs afloat.
“A win’s a win,” said CU coach Tad Boyle, “especially in conference play. But it was not pretty, especially at the end. Obviously we have to finish better and that puts a bit of a damper on this win.”
With Lacy hitting 21 of his game-high and career-high 34 points in the second half – including five of his eight 3-pointers – WSU cut a 19-point CU lead to three (66-63) before Booker’s final pair of foul shots.
“We had a 19-point lead and gave it up,” said Booker, whose 26 points Wednesday night was one off his career high. “We took it down to the last second. We can’t let it get to that point. It seemed like we didn’t have enough energy towards the end and we can’t do that Sunday because that team is a lot better and will come in and finish us off.”
“That team” is Washington, which defeated CU 71-54 in Seattle last month and visits the Coors Events Center Sunday at 6 p.m.
Booker scored 15 of his total as the Buffs (17-6, 6-4) increased a three-point halftime lead to 50-33 with 8:25 to play, then to 54-35 less than 2 minutes later. But Lacy, who didn’t play in CU’s 71-70 overtime win in Spokane on Jan. 8, and the Cougars (9-13, 2-8) roared back with their shooting behind the arc.
They attempted 15 treys in the second half, hitting nine of them (60 percent) and finishing 13-of-27 for the game (48.1 percent). The Cougars’ 13 made 3-pointers tied their total in the first meeting and Elon’s output for the most by a CU opponent this season.
Boyle said the Buffs defended Que Johnson well (he made 2 of 11 field goals and finished with eight points) but faltered on Lacy. “Not so much on him,” Boyle said. “When you’re eight for 13 on threes, that’s not good enough (defense).”
CU’s Xavier Johnson backed up Booker with 20 points – they were the only two Buffs in double figures – and Johnson’s nine rebounds and Wesley Gordon’s 10 picked up the slack for a sub-par Josh Scott. CU’s leading scorer (14.4 ppg) and rebounder (9.1 rpg) didn’t get his first point or board until the game’s final half minute.
“Give Washington State credit,” said Boyle, “their game plan was double him every time he touched the ball. They did and they were on him quickly.”
The Buffs improved their home record to 14-1 this season and 58-8 at the CEC under Boyle. The 14 ‘W’s this season tie for the fourth-most home wins in program history.
The Buffs led 23-20 at halftime, but it was a weird, disjointed journey to that meager advantage.
Neither team sizzled from the field in the first 20 minutes; CU shot 39 percent, WSU 40. At one point, the Buffs went 6:32 between field goals. And at 13-13, there wasn’t a first-half rebounding edge – forever a point of contention for Boyle. CU wound up winning the board battle 32-28 and shot 48.1 percent in the second to finish at 44 percent (22-of-50). The Buffs committed what Boyle called a “manageable” 12 turnovers while turning 17 Cougars errors into 14 points.
After the Cougars took a 7-6 lead, the Buffs appeared to take control with a 9-0 run that opened their largest margin of the half – 15-7.
Jaron Hopkins opened the run with a trey from the left corner and George King closed it with a short pull-up jumper. Then the Buffs went stagnant offensively, not getting their next field goal for just over 61/2 minutes.
For the first time in five games, Hopkins didn’t start. He was replaced by Xavier Talton, but the sophomore from Sterling picked up two quick fouls and went to the bench only 2:28 into his first career start.
While CU was muddling through its offense, WSU capitalized, mainly on the shooting of Lacy. The 6-4 junior brought the Cougars back by scoring eight of his 13 first-half points in the final 5:47.
The Buffs outscored the Cougars 11-3 to open the second half, with Booker going to the rim and getting 10 of those points. CU opened its first double-digit lead of the game – 34-23 – with 16:01 remaining.
“Coach just told me to be aggressive,” Booker said. “I had to pick and choose my spots . . . I got to the basket and got some easy buckets in transition.”
Three consecutive 3-pointers by Talton, Booker and Dustin Thomas opened a 50-33 lead 8 1/2 minutes to play, but the Cougars kept shooting treys and hitting them.
“Lacy got open way too many times,” Booker said. “It came down to a three-point game and whether it be one man or three people that’s hot on their team, we have to find a way to win the game. And thank God we made those free throws at the end to hold them off.
“But at the same time you can’t let an individual come in here, especially on the road, and let him take over and keep his team in the game.”
The Buffs have until Sunday to figure out how to do that. UW’s C.J. Wilcox scored 31 on the Buffs, hitting seven treys, in the meeting in Seattle.
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
CU men dispatch lowly Utes in overtime
Feb 1st
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – It was the kind of game that Tad Boyle had challenged his team to win – down-and-dirty, back-and-forth, blink-and-you’re-done.
Boyle’s Colorado Buffaloes didn’t blink. Never considered it either. Down 12 points in the second half, the Buffs caught Utah, got caught by a late Utes 3-pointer, then mustered enough want-to to win 79-75 in overtime Saturday at the Coors Events Center.
“Holy cow,” Boyle said afterwards. “We needed that one bad and our guys responded . . . because of what we’ve been through, it doesn’t matter who you are, you need to win your games at home and hold serve. We dropped one already (to UCLA) we’d love to have back. But it doesn’t work that way so this was a big game for us.”
Maybe bigger than big; monstrous wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
Losers in four of their previous five games without Spencer Dinwiddie and Tre’Shaun Fletcher, the Buffs needed step-up performances from stand-in players and command performances from their veterans. Finally, the afternoon came together on both fronts.
CU (16-6 overall, 5-4 Pac-12) had five players in double figures – four of them starters and two of those (Xavier Johnson, Josh Scott) finishing with double-doubles. Scott scored a game-high 20 points and tied Johnson, who scored 11, with a game-best 10 rebounds. Forward Wesley Gordon added 12 points and six rebounds as the Buffs blasted the Utes on the boards, 42-24.
CU was no less productive in the backcourt, with guards Askia Booker and Xavier Talton combining for 32 points. Booker’s stat line was near staggering: 18 points, eight rebounds, seven of the Buffs’ 13 assists, 7-of-10 from the free throw line and one steal.
But it was Talton who might have been the Buffs’ biggest force. Scoring a career-high 14 points, the sophomore from Sterling hit back-to-back 3-pointers during a 14-2 second-half run that brought CU back from its 12-point deficit. He also opened the OT scoring with another trey –
– as the Buffs finally put away the Utes (14-7, 3-6).
Talton, who with an angry cut under his left eye looked as if he’d gone 10 rounds in the ring rather than 22 minutes on the court, said he’d never experienced such a game – “Not on both ends. I think everybody just found me and I was feeling more confident. Just being in the gym this last week we talked about competing . . . we’ve been in the guy shooting a lot, so I think that’s something that’s helped out.”
The Buffs needed good rhythm and good vibes – more than desperately – and ultimately found both. At home for three games, CU couldn’t afford a loss to Utah to precede visits by Washington State (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., Pac-12 Network) and Washington (Sunday, Feb. 9, 6 p.m., ESPNU).
“This was a big game no matter how many we’d won or lost before,” Scott said. “It was a home game and you need to win at home. So, to me it was a next step for this team . . . a big step forward and hopefully it can keep going forward from here.”
Somewhere down the line – March perhaps? – losing at home to Utah would have left a bad mark. The Buffs had beaten the Utes in six of seven previous meetings, and Utah came to Boulder with a five-game road losing streak and having lost 10 road games in a row stretching to last season.
Those streaks almost ended at the CEC. After CU rallied from its 47-35 deficit to tie the score at 49-49 on the second of Talton’s back-to-back treys, Utah stayed close in the final 10 minutes and sent the game into overtime on Brandon Taylor’s fifth 3-pointer with 6 seconds left in regulation.
Utah had come into the game shooting 34 percent from beyond the arc, but the Utes shot 50 percent (four-of-eight) from long range in the first half and finished the game at 45.8 percent (11-of-24). Taylor and Delon Wright finished with 17 points each, with the versatile Wright adding 11 assists and seven steals – five of those in the first half.
They contributed to CU’s 10 first-half turnovers that produced 17 Utah points. But the Buffs settled themselves in the second half, committing only five more miscues, and amped up their board work to finish with a 42-24 advantage.
“We got out-rebounded by 18 – that’s the difference in the ball game,” said Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak. “Getting exposed in our last two games by that number of offensive rebounds by the other team, we don’t have a chance to compete against anybody.”
Boyle, meanwhile, called gathering offensive boards a large part of the mental makeup he’s been calling for: “Toughness shows up in rebounding stats . . . plus-18, that was the difference in the game.”
The Buffs fell behind 4-0, but quickly gathered themselves and led by as many as seven points on three occasions before the Utes stormed back with a 14-0 run and went up 33-26 with 2:53 left before halftime.
Utah stretched its lead to 12 by outscoring CU 10-4 to open the second half. The Utes added to their 3-point field goal total, getting a trey from Wright that followed a conventional three-point play by 7-foot center Dallin Bachynski, whose 7-2 older brother plays for Arizona State.
Down by 12 with 16:42 to play, the Buffs were sliding toward the abyss, but they never got there.
A 6-0 run – courtesy of two free throws by Xavier Johnson and baskets by Gordon and Eli Stalzer – sliced the Utes’ lead in half (47-41). And just over 3 minutes later, a 3-pointer by Xavier Talton from the left wing brought the Buffs to within 49-46 with 12:05 to play.
“You always want people to step up when their number is called,” Talton said. “I think Eli did a good job of that when he came in (and) Wesley definitely did on the boards getting the put backs and everything . . . Xavier Johnson as well. I think that if we continue to share the ball the sky’s the limit for our team.”
And “XT” wasn’t done; his trey from the left corner – set up by a Booker inside-out assist – completed a 14-2 CU run and tied the score at 49-49 at the 11:11 mark.
The last 10 minutes produced six lead changes and five ties – the final one at 62-62 after a Booker follow shot was waived off when the officials ruled the shot clock had expired.
After that, Gordon hit one of two free throws with 25 seconds left and Scott hit both of his after a Utah turnover with 19.2 seconds showing. The Buffs were up 65-62, but at the 6-second mark, Taylor drained his fourth trey of the game, tying the score and leaving time for a straightaway Booker 30-footer as time expired.
It bounded off the back of the rim and OT was next. Talton’s fourth trey of the afternoon put CU up 68-65 and Utah never caught up. After Talton added a 15-foot jumper to send the Buffs up 73-69, Booker hit five of six free throws in the OT’s final 45.8 seconds and Johnson added one of two. Another late Taylor trey pulled the Utes to 79-75 – but this one was over.
Boyle said he was most proud of Johnson’s performance and the maturity the sophomore is showing: “He’s a guy I challenged. He doesn’t like sitting on the bench but when he gives you the kind of effort he did today on both ends of the floor and rebounding the basketball, holy cow is he good.”
While conceding the game’s importance and what it might mean to the remainder of the home stand and season, Boyle refrained from calling it a “must-win.” Instead, he pared it down to this: “I want to talk about the ‘must’ possessions, because if you take care of the ‘must’ possessions the wins take care of themselves. And so do the losses when you don’t.”
More often than not on Saturday, the “must” possessions went to CU. And eventually, so did the “W.”