Posts tagged shooting
CU’s MBB Overcome Themselves (And Elon) In 80-63 Win
Dec 14th
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – Colorado coach Tad Boyle seriously doubted that a post-Kansas hangover reared its head on Friday night and his junior point guard, Spencer Dinwiddie, was even more emphatic.
“Not at all,” said Dinwiddie after No. 21 Colorado had finally disposed of Elon University 80-63 at the Coors Events Center. “It’s a credit to our team – we move on fast after wins and losses . . . I just don’t think we gave (Elon) the respect they deserved and we didn’t guard them at the three-point line.”
Yet as erratic and simply puzzling as the Buffaloes (10-1) were in several areas – shooting free throws, protecting the ball and defending the long ball to name three – they still won their tenth consecutive game, which hasn’t been done in CU basketball in 52 years.
Said Boyle: “It gives you an idea of where our program is when we win by 17 at home and people are kind of disappointed and frustrated. So I guess that’s a good sign.”
Such is progress, particularly when it follows six days after one of the benchmarks in program history – a 75-72 buzzer-beating victory over then-No. 6 KU. In the wild aftermath of that game, Boyle’s message to his team had been: “Don’t get drunk on your own wine.”
According to Dinwiddie at least, the Buffs took it to heart and head. But on Friday night, CU stumbled around just enough and Elon hit more than enough treys to make Boyle and the CEC crowd of 8,831 occasionally uneasy. The Phoenix’ 13 made treys (32 attempts) was an opponent high this season against the Buffs.
Boyle called the Phoenix (5-5) “a good team” that will win its share of games in the Southern Conference. But he also said his team won “a take-care-of-business-game” with a “workmanlike effort” – hardly superlatives after a superlative Saturday against the Jayhawks.
“Some nights it’s not going to be as pretty . . . there’s still a lot of improvement to be made,” Boyle said. “But I thought the cream rose in the second half.”
CU’s cream on this night: Dinwiddie, Xavier Johnson, Josh Scott and freshman George King. Dinwiddie finished with 17 points, seven assists and six rebounds, while Johnson and Scott each contributed 12 points and had double-doubles. King scored 10 off the bench, helping CU roll to a 31-6 edge in that area, and had a second-half tip-dunk that perked up his team and the crowd.
“Like coach Boyle said, I’m just trying to get my number called,” said King, who played 14 minutes (he had 15 against Arkansas State). “I didn’t know I was going to get this much time, but I had success on the boards (four rebounds) and attacking their defense. I got more time and I took advantage of it.”
Johnson, said Boyle, was a first-half “beast,” getting 11 of his 15 rebounds in the opening 20 minutes. Scott added 13 rebounds as CU bashed Elon 54-27 on the boards.
“To Colorado’s credit, first of all they are very good, they are very talented,” said Elon coach Matt Matheny. “But they out-rebounded us in the first half by 22 . . . we cannot expect to hang around with a top 25 team (like that). They really just abused us on the glass.”
But the Phoenix – specifically 6-8 senior Sebastian Koch – returned the abuse from beyond the arc. After opening the scoring with a trey, Koch drained another eight for the night, finishing nine of 14 from long range for a game-best 27 points.
“They shot threes very well,” Dinwiddie understated. “The open looks we gave them in the first half – that we shouldn’t have, that they missed – went in the second half. That, along with them slowing us down in the zone, really made it close.”
Also keeping the Phoenix in touch was the Buffs’ misfiring at the free throw line. CU finished the night 27-of-46, which certainly has Boyle’s attention but doesn’t panic him. “We chart every free throw in practice,” he said. “Our worst shooter in practice is shooting 75 percent . . . free throw shooting is a very individualistic thing; you get in the gym and do what you have to do. I have confidence they can do it in a game.”
Maybe more puzzling to him than the clanked foul shots were the Buffs’ 12 first-half turnovers – four more than they committed all game against the Jayhawks. Fortunately, CU’s second-half total (four) didn’t match the first half, but in comparing the 16 turnovers against Elon to the eight against KU, Boyle said, “As a coach, you scratch your head over that one.”
The Buffs didn’t score for nearly 4 minutes, missed their first five shots and committed five of their dozen first-half turnovers during that span. Elon surged to a 13-6 lead on Koch’s three-pointer with 12:25 left before halftime.
A couple of minutes before that, Boyle had seen enough. He pulled his five starters and replaced them with senior Ben Mills, sophomore Xavier Talton and freshmen Dustin Thomas, Tre’Shaun Fletcher and King.
A change did the Buffs good – or at least refocused them.
They caught and passed the Phoenix on a trey by Johnson from the left wing, grabbing their first lead at 17-16 with 10:10 left in the half. They outscored the Phoenix 21-5 to go up 27-18, with Dinwiddie hitting back-to-back treys at the run’s conclusion. In the half’s last 12 minutes, CU outscored Elon 35-13 and took a 41-26 lead to their locker room, matching their biggest advantage to that point.
CU pushed its lead to 19 (49-30) in the first 31/2 minutes of the second half, but Elon answered with five consecutive 3-pointers to pull to 52-45. Koch drained three of the five triples, with Tanner Sampson (12 points) accounting for the other pair.
The Buffs countered with a triple and a shorter jumper from Xavier Talton (nine points, six rebounds) and a layup and free throw from Scott to build another double-digit lead – 60-47. The Phoenix closed to 69-60 on a layup by Ryan Winters with 6:20 to play, but a conventional three-point play and a subsequent layup by Dinwiddie pushed CU ahead 74-60 with just over 3 minutes remaining.
The trey-happy Koch wasn’t done. He reached 27 points with his ninth triple of the night, bringing Elon to within 74-63 at the 2:59 mark. But when “XJ” responded with consecutive layups, pushing CU ahead by 15 (78-63), Elon was finally done.
For a second consecutive game, CU redshirt freshman Wesley Gordon remained sidelined due to illness/injury. He was on the bench in street clothes, but Boyle said Gordon would be ready to play on Saturday, Dec. 21 against No. 7 Oklahoma State in the MGM Grand Showcase in Las Vegas.
The Buffs’ 10-game winning streak – something that hasn’t been done in CU hoops since the 1944-45 season – “is another milestone,” Boyle said. “I haven’t talked to this team a lot – because we’re so darn young – about what their legacy is going to be. But as we move into conference play I think those are things we need to talk about and celebrate. It’s a great thing; 52 years is a long time.”
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Buffs, Booker end #6 KU’s 19-game win streak
Dec 8th
BOULDER – No way for Colorado to beat towering, talented Kansas without 6-9 forward Wes Gordon?
Way.
No way (except maybe at gunpoint) that CU coach Tad Boyle strays from man-to-man defense and utilizes a 2-3 zone?
Way.
No way Coors Events Center matinee idol Ben Mills contributes meaningful first-half minutes against a team like the Jayhawks?
Way.
No way CU shoots nearly as frigid as the Boulder weather – 41.1 percent from the field and 59.5 percent from the foul line – and survives?
Way.
And no way the up, down, often kicked-around Askia Booker delivers the biggest shot of his life?
Way – and way, way past that.
It was CU 75, No. 6 KU 72 at the sold-out, geeked-out CEC on Saturday afternoon. The Buffs (9-1) won their ninth consecutive game for the first time since the 2005-06 season and slapped down a top 10 team for the first time since last Valentine’s Day when they beat No. 9 Arizona 71-58.
But that win won’t hold a holiday candle to this one. Christmas morning in the Rocky Mountains might not be able to match this – at least not for Boyle, his Buffs basketball program and an adoring CU fan base.
Booker hit three-pointers to close out each half, but it was his 30-footer at the final buzzer that he, his teammates and the crowd of 11,113 will remember for . . . maybe forever.
It had been a decade – or since the 2002-03 season – and 19 games, most of them in another conference, since CU defeated KU, and it was Boyle’s first win as a head coach in five tries against his alma mater. The Jayhawks still lead the series 123-40, but as for that 40th Buffs win . . .
“I’m not quite sure what to say after that one . . . it’s hard to put in historical perspective,” Boyle said about half an hour after CU students had cleared the CEC court and the building had stopped shuddering. “It was a hump game for our basketball program, considering what they did to us last year at Allen Field House and the amount of talent they have on their team.”
“Last year” was a 90-54 beat down in Lawrence, and if Booker and the Buffs said it didn’t motivate them, there will switches and ashes in their stockings in about three weeks.
CU’s list of Saturday heroes starts with the 6-1 junior guard from Los Angeles but goes upward to the 7-0 Mills, who means every bit as much to his teammates as the Buffs logo. Then add Spencer Dinwiddie (15 points, seven assists), Xavier Johnson (14 points, six rebounds, three steals), Josh Scott (14 points, four boards, two assists) and nearly every other CU player who suited up.
But it was Booker’s final trey that shot down the Jayhawks and shut down their fans. With 3 seconds to play and the score tied at 72-72 after KU had erased a nine-point CU lead, Booker got a pressurized inbounds pass from Johnson at the right sidecourt, went three dribbles past halfcourt and pulled up for more of a one-handed push shot than a jumper.
The ball found the net as time expired and Booker, who tied Dinwiddie with a team-best 15 points, found his place in CU hoops history. Was it the biggest shot of his career?
“Without a doubt . . . unless I win an NBA championship, that’s it,” he said. “I’m not sure I ever thought that would happen. At the same time, I think it’s a testament to Coach Boyle and how we go through our late clock plays in practice. The reason he does that is for nights like this.
“Thankfully, I came out and hit that shot. It felt great when it left my hand. I told the media after the game, I was actually in a straight line, which is great for a shooter. You don’t want to be fading away to the left or the right or backwards. I was going straight for the basket. My momentum held my form up and it went right in.”
Said Boyle: “When he let it go I knew it was in . . . it was money.”
Kansas (6-2) might have believed it would cash in inside with the absence of Gordon, who had missed practice since CU’s Tuesday night win at Colorado State due to illness/injury. The Jayhawks usually thrive inside with 7-0 Joel Embiid, 6-9 Tarik Black and 6-8 Perry Ellis, and they did outrebound the Buffs 33-32 and got 10 points each from Embiid and Ellis.
KU didn’t lose much of its power inside, outscoring CU 42-26 in the paint. The Jayhawks also got 22 bench points to the Buffs’ 14, but CU converted 14 KU turnovers into 24 points. The Buffs committed eight turnovers – a monstrous improvement from last season in Lawrence when CU had 12 by halftime and 18 by game’s end.
In the rematch, with Gordon watching from the bench in street clothes, Boyle knew a step up was needed from his frontcourt players such as the 6-7 Johnson, 6-10 Josh Scott and reserves such as Mills, who contributed eight of his 10 minutes and all of his four points in the first half. Mills also snatched three rebounds.
“It was so much fun,” Mills said. “This is something you dream of as a kid, a packed house at the Coors Events Center and the fans going nuts. To come in and play well in front of the fans and put on a show for them was great.”
Trailing by as many nine twice in the first 20 minutes, the Buffs finally caught the Jayhawks with a 14-4 run and took their first lead (26-25) on a layup from the left side by Mills with 4:21 left before intermission. It was Mills’ second straight basket, following a pump fake that got Embiid in the air and resulted in a soft, short jumper.
The CEC crowd roared with both of Mills’ baskets – and more of the blissful noise for the Buffs was coming.
Said Booker of Mills: “This guy comes to practice every day and works his butt off. Although he may not play as much as he wants or as much as he should, when his number was called, he was ready. Without him, we wouldn’t have won the game.”
And Boyle said the game wouldn’t have been won if he hadn’t “swallowed my pride,” pulled the Buffs out of his favored man-to-man and stationed them in a 2-3 zone. Given Gordon’s day-to-day status and KU’s inside power, Boyle said he had no choice: “If they would have made some shots against it in the first half early I probably would have gotten out of it, because I’m not committed to it. But, they didn’t, they struggled with it, and so we stayed with it. Second half we tried to flash it and keep them off balance a little bit. It’s hard sometimes man to man once they get in a rhythm to stop them, and I think the zone helped keep them off balance.”
Also, the Jayhawks came to Boulder shooting 30.7 percent from three-point range, and part of Boyle’s strategy was to make them jump shooters rather than layup and put-back artists. KU finished at 52.9 percent from the field (25 percent from beyond the arc) and Boyle conceded on first glance at the stat sheet, “I wonder how we won . . . but our guys’ resiliency and guts won out. I’m just glad we had the ball at the end; they were scoring pretty quick, pretty easily at the end.”
The Buffs endured their worst free-throw shooting of the season in the first half, hitting only 11 of 19 and finishing 22-for-37. In the final 1:49, Dinwiddie hit five of six and Booker one of two – his make coming with 12.8 seconds to play. KU called timeout with 11 seconds left to reset, and Ellis tied it at 72-72 with a layup.
The Jayhawks had rallied from nine down after the Buffs went up 53-44 on one of two free throws by Tre’Shaun Fletcher and a steal and stuff by the freshman on the next KU possession. But over the next 2 minutes, a 7-0 Jayhawks run cut their deficit to 53-51 and it was Boyle’s turn to call a timeout with just over 9 minutes to play. When the Buffs didn’t score, super KU freshman Andrew Wiggins (22 points) sent KU’s run to 9-0, tying the game at 53-53 with a layup at the 8:38 mark.
CU led by as many as six points twice in the final 3:36, the first six-point lead (63-57) coming on a Booker trey from the right corner. That shot, said Booker, “was great for me, but at the same time that play was initially for Spencer. I think they expected that so they left me open . . . it let me make the play.”
But the Jayhawks weren’t waving a white towel. They roared back behind a trey and two-pointer by Naadir Tharpe, a Wiggins layup and an Ellis tip to close to 70-68. With 12.8 seconds showing, Dinwiddie caught Wiggins’ elbow on a three-point attempt, and Wiggins hit two of three free throws to pull KU to within 71-70.
Dinwiddie made one of two foul shots – he finished eight-for-10 from the line – to increase the Buffs’ lead to 72-70. But Ellis’ layup tied the score and set the stage for Booker’s buzzer beater and the CU students storming the court.
Boyle said Booker, who was just five of 24 from three-point range in the first nine games but three-for-six Saturday, “is important to us, he’s our emotional leader. He can’t let his play affect his leadership on the court and it’s hard, it’s hard when you’re a shooter and you’re not shooting it well . . . (but) the capability’s there. If I didn’t see it in practice and he’s shooting that percentage (20.8 percent on three’s through nine games), then I’m the dumbest coach in America to be playing him.”
Turns out Boyle isn’t close to dumb or dumber. “Ski” Booker chiseled out his place in Buffs history and KU fans left the CEC without chanting “Rock Chalk Jayhawk.”
Said Boyle: “’Ski’ made an unbelievable play and we’re going to take it and not look back. Our crowd was great; to me it was a great day for college basketball in the state of Colorado and I’m really proud of our guys.”
WBB: Two top recruits sign letters of intent to CU
Dec 1st
BOULDER – Zoe Correal and Brecca Thomas have signed National Letters of Intent to play basketball and continue their education at the University of Colorado in 2014-15 head coach Linda Lappe announced on Wednesday, the first day of the NCAA’s early signing period.
“We are very excited about having Brecca and Zoe in the Buff family,” head coach Linda Lappe said. “They are great people first and foremost and will bring a lot of valuable skills to the University of Colorado both on and off the court. They have competed and won at a high level in their high school and club programs and have proven to be successful all around.”
Correal, a 6-foot, 4-inch center from El Cerrito, Calif., is gearing up for her senior season at Salesian High School a program where she has contributed to the last two NorCal Division IV titles.
“Zoe is a bona fide center who will get up and down the floor quickly and give us another big presence in the post,” Lappe said. “She has worked hard over her high school career and continues to get better each year.”
She averaged 9.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.4 blocks as a junior, guiding the Pride to a 29-8 record, the NorCal title and runner-up finish at the 2013 CIF Division IV State Tournament.
“I’ll be ready to work,” Correal said. “I’ll give it all I have. I will bring my defense and will be working on my offensive game, getting ready for the bigs in the Pac-12 that can shoot. I’m excited to show everyone what I’ve got.”
Correal was named to the 2012-13 Cal-Hi Sports Division IV All-State Second Team. As a sophomore in 2011-12, she averaged 3.5 points and 4.0 rebounds on a 31-5 squad which also advanced to the Division IV state finals. Rated as the No. 46 post player in the nation by ESPN HoopGurlz, Correal also played for the CA Ballaz club program. She’s interested in pursuing psychology as a major.
“I’m really excited to get to Colorado,” Correal said. “(On my visit) I went to a psychology class with (current senior Rachel Hargis), it was an advanced class so I didn’t quite understand it, but knew I could do this. Everything is beautiful out there, the brick buildings on campus, and the mountains took me off guard, how pretty it was out there.”
Thomas, a 5-5 point guard from Houston, is entering her senior season at the Kinkaid School, a winning program in its own right. She has scored nearly 1,700 points and dished out over 400 assists in three years for the Falcons who have won back-to-back Southwest Preparatory Conference Division I titles.
“Brecca is going to be an exciting player as she plays with a lot of heart and energy,” Lappe said. “She will help us in the guard position as she has a tremendous skill set and is truly a triple threat player.”
A three-time All-SPC Division I selection, Thomas averaged 20.6 points, 5.5 assists and 3.5 steals as a junior, leading the Falcons to a 28-5 record. She hit 47 percent from the field (247-of-528) and was even more accurate from 3-point range, shooting 51 percent (72-of-141).
“Brecca is such a student of the game,” Kinkaid head coach Stacey Marshall said. “Both off the court and with her practice habits, she has an incredible skill set…kind of a once in a lifetime player.”
Thomas averaged 17.3 points, 4.2 steals and 3.8 assists as a sophomore as the Falcons finished 31-3, setting a school record for wins and claiming their first of two straight SPC crowns. She hopes to bring leadership as a point guard and a fast pace to her new teammates next year, who she’s already connected with.
“Everyone is so friendly and (Colorado) is a nice atmosphere,” Thomas said on her visit this past October. “It’s a great group of girls and coaching staff. I feel safe with them. And in academics my planned major (marketing), Colorado is a good school, so I really liked that.”
Colorado, ranked No. 17 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 Poll, will host Alcorn State in its home opener on Friday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. at the Coors Events Center.