Posts tagged UCLA
CU Continuing At NCAA Regionals
Apr 29th
University of Colorado will continue its season at the 2014 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Regionals.
The Buffaloes received one of 44 at large bids to the regional tournaments, considered the preliminary rounds of the NCAA Championships competition.
CU, who will be sending the team or an individual to the regionals for a fourth consecutive year, will compete as the No. 17 seed in the Central Regional at the 6,200-yard, par-72 Karsten Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla. from May 8-10.
The Buffs’ region includes fellow Pac-12 opponents UCLA, Arizona and California (all of whom rank in Golfstat’s most recent top 35) and former Big 12 foes Kansas, Texas and host team Oklahoma State. Additionally, Texas Tech’s Kimmie Hill will be competing as an individual.
The top eight teams and two individuals from each of the three regionals will advance to the NCAA Championships Finals, held at the Tulsa Country Club from May 20-23 in Tulsa, Okla.
Going into the tournament with the ups and downs of the regular season behind them and with prior knowledge of the course helps Kelly know what her team has to do to have success at regionals and have the possibility of advancing to the NCAA Championships. Kelly says it’s a difficult time, with the team also taking its final exams during the week of regionals, but believes the Buffs can find the right balance.
Source: CU Buffs
WBB: Buffs hit trifecta against UCLA
Mar 7th
Story by B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor, CUBuffs.com
SEATTLE – College basketball in March is all about surviving and advancing – and the Colorado women’s team did both Thursday afternoon in the opening round of the Pac-12 Conference Tournament.
Overtaking UCLA with a 15-2 run midway through the second half, the Buffaloes defeated the Bruins 76-65 to reach the tournament quarterfinals for the third time since beginning Pac-12 competition in 2011.
But the assignment Friday at KeyArena (1 p.m. MT, Pac-12 Networks) is daunting: No. 9 seed CU (17-13) faces No. 1 seed Stanford (28-2). The Cardinal defeated the Buffs 87-77 on Jan. 12 in Boulder in their only regular-season meeting.
“I think we’re ready for them . . . it’s win or go home,” said CU senior guard Brittany Wilson. “So you lay it all on the floor, and we’re ready. We all have to come out and play 40 minutes. In the end, it’s about who plays 40 minutes the best.”
In defeating the Bruins (13-18) for the third time this season, Wilson and her twin sister, Ashley, gave the Buffs 55 quality minutes between them. The Wilson sisters combined for 33 points – 17 from Brittany, a career-high 16 from Ashley – to offset a game-high 23 points from UCLA sophomore Nirra Fields.
Lexy Kresl contributed 14 points off the bench for the Buffs – nine of them in the second half when they rallied from a 46-38 deficit. Kresl’s 3-pointer – the last of eight in 16 attempts for CU – gave the Buffs their largest lead of the game, 68-56, with 2:50 remaining. The Bruins never got closer than six points the rest of the way.
“I’m really excited for our team,” CU coach Linda Lappe said. “Any time you can win a game in postseason, it’s a plus.”
After a 29-29 halftime tie, the Bruins – despite being minus senior guard and No. 2 scorer Thea Lemberger (concussion) who was averaging 15.0 points – went on an 11-2 run and took their 46-38 lead. But Lappe and the Buffs adjusted defensively, nudging the Bruins out of their comfort zone and disrupting their offense.
Said Lappe: “They were really comfortable (offensively) to start the second half. Everybody was making shots, even players that don’t normally make shots. You could just see them start to get comfortable in what they were doing. I always think your defense has a huge part in that, and we wanted to try to make them uncomfortable, so we started to trap a little bit and tried to speed them up and make them do things they weren’t as comfortable doing, making them pass to players, making them pass over hands, and just increasing our aggressiveness.”
UCLA coach Cori Close agreed: “I thought they really got us out of rhythm in the second half . . . they got out and started denying passing lanes and trapped our first pass and really got us out of rhythm. We’re a team that needs to move the pieces around and hide certain mismatches and take advantage of other ones. They really made us play just a read-and-react type of situation, and it made it a guard game. We needed to attack off the dribble, and we didn’t have quite enough people that were confident in that kind of game.”
CU’s strategy worked. Of UCLA’s 13 turnovers, eight were committed in the second half. CU, meanwhile, cut its miscues from nine in the first half to four in the second. The Buffs outrebounded the Bruins 43-35 and held them to 38.8 percent shooting from the field (26-of-67). CU shot slightly better at 39.3 percent (24-of-61).
Lappe lauded her bench, which outscored the Bruins’ reserves 28-16, as being “fantastic . . . everybody did their job. Everybody knew their role. When we played together in that game, we were fantastic. When we moved the ball, when we played together defensively, hit the open player, and then we knocked down those open shots and everything seemed to go our way.”
The Wilson sisters accounted for four of CU’s eight 3-pointers, with Brittany hitting three of her six attempts and Ashley one of her two. The Buffs 50 percent performance from behind the arc, bolstered by four-of-six in the second half, followed a frigid 10 percent (3-of-30) from long range in the final three regular-season games. Thursday’s eight 3-pointers tie for the second most of the season.
“Me and coach watched film before we left (Boulder) , and one thing that she noticed about my shots was I was falling out of my shots,” Brittany Wilson said. “She said there is no reason I should be doing that on the three, and just stay in my shot, and that’s exactly what I did and they fell.”
If the Bruins were without Lemberger, the Buffs also were minus their No. 2 scorer – junior Jen Reese, who went down in the first half of the CU-UCLA meeting in Boulder with a broken bone in her shoulder. Ashley Wilson said the Buffs have adjusted well: “With any team, adversity is going to come. So it’s just about how you respond to adversity and how tough you’re willing to be and how much you’re willing to bounce back. We’ve done that all year long, no matter injuries or whatever. No team is going to feel sorry for you because you have injuries. You have to suit up and be ready to go the next day.”
Fields, a 5-9 sophomore, opened the scoring for UCLA and by the time the first half was over had collected 16 of the Bruins’ 29 points. The Buffs matched that total for a 29-29 halftime tie, but no CU player could manage over six points – the Wilson sisters had six each – in the first 20 minutes.
After Fields hit her jumper for the game’s first basket, the Buffs took control and rolled to a 17-10 advantage before the Bruins settled down. The teams traded baskets and the lead until the halftime buzzer ended play at 29-29. UCLA outscored CU 15-7 in the opening 6 minutes of the second half to take an eight-point (46-38) lead before the Buffs regrouped, went on their decisive run, tied the score at 46-46 on a 3-pointer from the right wing by Lauren Huggins and went ahead for good on a basket by Brittany Wilson.
After Kresl’s trey gave them their largest lead – 68-56 – the Buffs finished out their scoring at the free throw line. Their 20-of-24 performance included Kresl and Brittany Wilson each going four-for-four in the final 1:15 to keep UCLA at bay.
The Buffs move on, the Bruins go home. “We’re not ready to be done playing yet, and I think you can see how much intensity we played in the second half that we want to keep playing,” Lappe said. “I’m just excited for our entire team.”
WBB: Buffs take it to wire, but lose
Mar 2nd
Release: March 02, 2014
By: B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor
BOULDER – The Colorado women’s basketball team had won its two previous games by going into second-half survival mode, locking down Arizona and UCLA in the last 20 minutes. Twice was nice, but the magic finally fizzled Sunday afternoon against Southern California.
Gritty CU erased a 12-point halftime deficit, even took a one-point lead in the last 2 minutes, but couldn’t close out USC in a 66-59 Pac-12 Conference loss at the Coors Events Center. A 55-45 win in January’s league opener gave the Trojans a series sweep.
Needing a full 40-minute effort to send out seniors Rachel Hargis and the Wilson twins – Ashley and Brittany – on a celebratory note, the Buffaloes’ focus was sporadic in the first half and they couldn’t fully compensate for it in the second.
CU (16-13, 6-12) trailed by as many as 14 points in the first half and nine midway through the second before catching USC (18-12, 11-7) at 56-56 and going ahead 59-58 on an “and-one” by Brittany Wilson with 1:22 remaining.
But the Trojans scored the game’s last eight points – six of them by junior guard Ariya Crook, a former high school teammate of the Wilsons. Crook hit a layup and went four-of-four from the free throw line in the final 56 seconds, finishing with a game-high 18 points.
“You would think at this point in the season with every game meaning something, there would be a lot of focus throughout the game,” CU coach Linda Lappe said, noting her team was “all over the place” mentally in the first half. “For us, the free throw line is something you can look at and see really quickly if we’re focused. When we’re focused, we knock down free throws 70-80 percent of the time. When we’re not, we shoot about 30-45 percent from the line.”
That was one of Sunday’s trouble spots for CU. Although they hit eight more field goals than the Trojans (25-17), that advantage was blunted by the Buffs’ dismal 9-of-21 (42.9 percent) from the free throw line. CU also missed all nine of its 3-point attempts, but had decided edges in points in the paint (40-12), second-chance points (10-3) and bench points (24-17).
Yet falling behind by 14 early, catching up, then falling back late by nine took its toll in spent energy. “You can’t spot a good team 12 points,” said Lappe. “Ultimately we ran out of gas at the end as well as time . . . I thought we came out ready, but it lasted about five minutes, and then we kind of sputtered through the rest of the first half. We turned the ball over too much (20 times) and missed some easy shots.”
Brittany Wilson, who scored a team-best 15 points, said playing catch up for most of the afternoon was a grueling exercise for the Buffs: “I felt it. We were tired, but we were going to fight, and that’s one thing that we’ve done all year. It is hard coming back from a 12-point deficit, but we all knew we could do it, so I thought we did a great job believing that and we gave a great fight at the end.”
CU had held its past two opponents to a combined five field goals in the second half of each game, allowing 22 total points to Arizona and UCLA in winning both games. After watching the Trojans shoot 47.6 percent (10-of-21) in Sunday’s first half, the Buffs tightened up their ‘D’ again in the second half, limiting USC to 25.9 percent (7-of-27).
But the talented Trojans were better down the stretch than either the Wildcats or Bruins, even with senior forward Cassie Harberts (14 points) contending with four fouls.
In addition to Brittany Wilson’s 15 points, Ashley Wilson, freshman Zoe Beard-Fails and sophomore Jamee Swan added 10 each. Hargis scored six, including a foul-line jumper that brought the Buffs to within 56-54 with 3:39 to play.
“It’s funny because at the game on Friday, I passed up that same shot, and this time, I just caught it right in rhythm,” Hargis said. “I actually heard Ashley scream my name, but I was already into the shot, so I just took it and it bounced around. I was ready to grab it if it was coming out, but it rolled it in, so I was glad.”
The Buffs were without junior forward Jen Reese on Sunday and will be for this week’s Pac-12 Conference Tournament and any further postseason play. Reese, averaging 12 points and 5.8 rebounds a game, suffered a broken bone in her left shoulder near the conclusion of the first half in Friday night’s 62-42 win against UCLA. The Buffs, seeded No. 9, and the Bruins, seeded No. 8, play again in Thursday’s Pac-12 opening round in Seattle (1 p.m. MST, Pac-12 Network, KKZN AM 760)
CU stayed close for the first 41/2 minutes Sunday, but after a 10-10 tie USC put together an 18-4 run and took a 14-point lead (28-14) that the Buffs could reduce by only two (34-22) at intermission. If the Buffs were to extend their winning streak to three games, another defensive lock down would be needed in the second half. An upturn on offense might help, too.
CU got both, holding USC without a field goal in the first 6:00 and outscoring the Trojans 14-2 to tie the score at 36-36 on a put-back by Beard-Fails. Brittany Wilson contributed six of the 14 points in CU’s early second-half run.
USC quickly went back in front by nine (47-38) but CU cut into that deficit with two Brittany Wilson free throws, a layup by Swan on a nice feed from Arielle Roberson, then two Swan foul shots, pulling to 49-44 with 8:48 remaining. But a 3-pointer from the top of the key by Desiree Bradley gave USC a 52-44 lead.
The Trojans maintained an eight- or six-point edge until Ashley Wilson hit a layup and Hargis added her foul-line jumper after Wilson’s missed free throw, cutting USC’s lead to 56-54. Swan’s up-and-under layup tied the score at 56-56 with 2:38 left.
Harberts broke the tie (58-56) with two free throws, but Brittany Wilson converted a conventional three-point play with a layup and a foul shot, giving CU a 59-58 lead with 1:21 to play. Unfortunately for the Buffs, the three points by “B-Wil” would be their last of the regular season.
Although CU closed the regular season by winning two of its last three, Lappe said defeating USC would have generated even more momentum for the Pac-12 Tournament. “I thought we had great momentum after the second half against Arizona, and we took that into UCLA, but then tonight we just didn’t have enough,” she said. “Are we getting better? Yes, we’re still getting better. Are we there yet? No. The good thing about this time of the year, and why they call it March Madness, is that anything can happen.”
Still, Hargis said the wins against Arizona and UCLA and Sunday’s refusal to roll over created “some more positive energy going into the tournament. Before, we were kind of down and didn’t know what we could do. We know now that we can be a great team. We just have to buckle down, focus and play the whole 40 minutes, not start off so badly and we just really have to work hard in practice this week to be ready to go Thursday.”
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU