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CU men: “No sense of urgency” leads to defeat by the last place team in PAC-12
Mar 10th
Story by Caryn Maconi, CUBuffs.com
Colorado took a step down on Saturday afternoon, losing to the Pac-12 Conference team in last-place team entering the final weekend of play. But the Buffaloes won’t have to wait long to avenge the loss.
Oregon State upset CU 64-58 at the Coors Events Center in the final regular-season game for both teams. CU defeated OSU 72-68 last month in Corvallis, and the Buffs will get the chance to play the Beavers again next week in the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas.
With Washington State upsetting Southern California on Saturday, Oregon State becomes the tournament’s No. 12 seed, drawing No. 5 CU on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. MST at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The last time the Buffs ended the regular season with an opponent they would play five days later occurred in the 2009-10 season. CU defeated Texas Tech at the CEC, the lost to the Red Raiders in the first round of the Big 12 Conference Tournament.
CU shot only 35 percent from the field Saturday and had only one player – Spencer Dinwiddie with 18 – in double figures. The Beavers shot 43.5 percent and out-rebounded the Buffs 38-32.
The Buffaloes finished with a 20-10 overall record and a 10-8 league mark, while the Beavers closed out at 14-17 and 4-14. Colorado’s 20-win season is its third straight, a school record for three consecutive years and the first time a CU coach has recorded three 20-win seasons. Spencer Dinwiddie had 18 points
But third-year Buffs coach Tad Boyle wasn’t happy.
“I want to apologize to everyone in this building for our performance,” Boyle said to the crowd before recognizing senior Sabatino Chen and graduating junior Shane Harris-Tunks at the post-game Senior Day ceremony. Chen scored nine points while Harris-Tunks added four.
The Buffs got off to a sloppy start, committing five turnovers in the first 10 minutes compared to the Beavers’ one. At the 12:42 mark, a three by OSU’s Victor Robbins followed by an Eric Moreland jumper gave the Beavers a 14-9 lead.
But Colorado, led by Chen, responded. Over the next 2.5 minutes, Chen scored on a layup, assisted a Xavier Talton layup, then grabbed a steal and turned that into a three-pointer to put the Buffs up 16-14. CU held onto the lead for the rest of the half and led 29-27 at the break.
Boyle said Chen did just what he should offensively against OSU’s zone defense.
“Usually when a team plays zone, they’re playing because they don’t feel like they can guard you man-to-man, so you let them off the hook by taking quick jump shots and by not attacking and moving the ball,” Boyle said. “Sabatino, with all the things he gives you, [is] the epitome of what we want young men to be as student athletes at the University of Colorado.”
At intermission, Chen led in scoring with seven points, the first time in his career he has been the Buffs’ leading scorer at half.
Out of the locker room, though, OSU found its momentum. The Beavers went on a 15-6 run to take a 42-33 lead with 15:08 remaining, and the Buffs spent the rest of the half trying to recover.
Sophomore guard Askia Booker, who ended the game with eight points and no rebounds, said that recovery attempt just didn’t have enough energy.
“There was no sense of urgency whatsoever,” Booker said. “Especially on the defensive end, and that’s where we’re going to win games.”
While the Beavers built their largest lead of the game – eight at the 10:15 mark – the Buffs did put together a late comeback attempt in the final two minutes that nearly made up the difference. CU was down 56-50 with 2:10 remaining when a Dinwiddie trey closed the gap to three.
Dinwiddie was the only scorer for CU in those final minutes. While he would hit another basket with 51.2 seconds on the clock and make three of three free throws with 28.8 remaining, OSU’s Roberto Nelson responded on nearly every Beaver possession.
By the final buzzer, the Buffs were down six to close out their regular season with a rare home loss to the Pac-12’s lowest-ranked team. CU is 12-3 in the CEC this season and 44-7 at home in Boyle’s three season. Of the three home conference games CU has dropped this season (UCLA, Arizona State, Oregon State), Saturday’s was by the largest scoring margin.
Boyle made no excuses for his team’s performance, saying that while he’d already talked to his players about his disappointment, he’d take the blame for the loss outside of the locker room.
“This one is on me as head coach. We weren’t ready to play today, mentally, emotionally or physically,” Boyle said. “You get what you deserve in life, and we got what we deserved.”
The 2011-12 Buffs were in a similar position at the end of the regular season, as they dropped their final two contests against Oregon and Oregon State on the road and nearly missed out on an NCAA Tournament berth. Knowing that they would need a conference tournament championship to earn their spot, they responded and took home the Pac-12 Conference Tournament trophy.
Dinwiddie said last year’s postseason story was all about the seniors.
“We just kind of banded together as brothers, we understood what we were playing for,” Dinwiddie said. “We had four seniors on the roster that were never going to have this opportunity again . . . so we just wanted to give them a special time.”
This year’s Buffs are young. Just two players — Chen, a senior, and Shane Harris-Tunks, who is graduating in May as a redshirt junior — see this postseason as the beginning of the end.
And while Boyle won’t reflect for long on last season’s glory, he said his team will enter Wednesday’s Pac-12 Tournament first round with a very similar mindset.
“We are going to approach the Pac-12 Tournament this year just like we did last year,” Boyle said. “We have to get ready to play whoever is placed in front of us. It is not about winning four games in four days, it is about beating whoever our first round opponent is and living for another day.”
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CU women’s b-ball 25 – 5, facing #4 Stanford tonight in Pac-12 semifinals
Mar 9th
Freshman Jamie Swan’s late game baskets iced the win
Story by B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com
Overcoming a first half of near and sometimes bad misses, fourth-seeded CU finally took control in the final 20 minutes and ousted fifth-seeded Washington 70-59 at KeyArena.
The No. 18 Buffs (25-5) earned a Saturday night date with top-seeded Stanford (29-2) in the Pac-12 semifinals. The No. 4-ranked Cardinal, which defeated the Buffs twice during regular-season play, advanced by disposing of Washington State 79-60 in Friday night’s first game.
Jamee Swan had 15 points and 10 rebounds against Washinton
No. 2 seed California (28-2) and No. 3 seed UCLA (24-6) play in Saturday night’s first semifinal game. The CU-Stanford tip is scheduled for 9:30 p.m. MST (Pac-12 Network).
“There’s only one way to look at a matchup with Stanford, and that’s as an opportunity,” said CU coach Linda Lappe. “We’re going to look at it that way.”
Stanford’s two wins against CU were by 17 points (57-40) in Boulder on the opening weekend of Pac-12 play, then by three points (59-56) at Stanford on January’s last weekend. The Buffs believed they had improved at least that much from the first to the second meeting, and they believe they’re even better now.
They’ll probably need a better start than they had Friday night, when they were forced to overcome a first half that saw them miss 13 of their first 16 field goal attempts and go to their locker room to ponder their 28.9 percent (13-for-45) shooting.
“We knew we had to settle down, quit missing easy shots and quit fouling,” said senior guard Chucky Jeffery, who scored 12 of her game-high 19 points in the second half. “Now we know how the floor feels, the jitters are gone and the first (game) is out of the way. Now it’s about quick memory loss and going on to the next one – and it’s a big one. We want to come out and play better Saturday.”
Lappe used 11 players against UW (20-11) and not only did all of them score, all but one of them collected at least two rebounds and all but two contributed at least one assist. In addition to her 19 points, Jeffery also had a game-best four assists, while freshman forward Jamee Swan scored a career-high 15 points and hauled in 10 of CU’s 58 rebounds – UW had 36 – in her 19 minutes of court time.
“I feel like I played the best I ever played,” said Swan, who also blocked three shots. “It was really nice to be out there and not be afraid and have my teammates behind me.”
All of them were. CU’s bench outscored UW’s 33-18. The Buffs had 25 offensive rebounds to the Huskies’ 13, outscored them 40-18 in the paint and won the second-chance point duel 20-9.
“I like how we crashed the offensive glass,” Lappe said. “We needed to get a lot of extra shots in this game and we did. We showed a lot of resolve in chasing down loose balls to get us extra shots.”
Lappe applauded Swan and freshman guard Kyleesha Weston, who contributed two points and six rebounds in 21 minutes. “I’m really proud of our players,” Lappe said. “I thought we stepped up big at certain times . . . it seemed like whoever we brought into the game, we never missed a beat. That allowed us to get some rest so we could make a push at the end.”
In their 68-61 win over the Huskies last month in Boulder, the Buffs limited the Pac-12’s No. 2 scorer, Jazmine Davis, to nine points. Friday night, Davis got 17 – two below her average. She hit two of UW’s seven three-pointers, which were two more than CU allowed in Boulder and two above Friday night’s goal. U-Dub leads the conference in three-pointers made (8.2 a game). The Huskies’ final two treys Friday night came in the last two minutes when they were trying to cut into a 10-point Buffs lead.
UW got as close as four (63-59) before Jeffery scored five consecutive points – a jumper and three of four free throws – and Swan sank two free throws with 13 seconds left to account for a 7-0 run to close out the game.
The Buffs were up 29-26 at the half, but it took them almost 18 minutes to get their first lead. Blame that on shooting that was somewhere south of frigid. UW led by as many as six points (14-8) before the Buffs finally began finding their range – if they ever did.
Lappe said her team was “really excited to play. I think anytime that’s the case you miss some easy shots . . . but I like how we stayed with it.”
After a Jeffery three-pointer – her team’s only trey of the first half – tied the score at 23-23, she hit a pull-up jumper from the free throw line following a UW turnover to give CU its first lead, 25-23, with 2:41 before intermission.
The final 20 minutes would belong to whoever wanted them, and based on the first 21/2 it appeared that was CU. After scoring the first eight points the Buffs surged to a 37-26 lead and were threatening to rip this one open.
It didn’t happen. Talia Walton’s trey started an 8-0 UW run and Davis’ traditional three-point finished it, pulling the Huskies back to within three (37-34) with 16:09 remaining.
CU went back ahead by as many as seven points on an Ashley Wilson layup and maintained at least a four-point lead until a pair of free throws by Kristi Kingma pulled UW to 45-43 with 10:29 to play.
The Huskies could get no closer. Pulling ahead twice by 10 on a pair of layups by Swan in the final two minutes, the Buffs looked like they could begin making semifinal plans for Saturday.
But three-pointers by Heather Corral and Walton, who finished with 13, closed UW’s deficit to 63-59 with less than a minute left. Jeffery answered with a layup and three of four free throws, and when Swan sank a pair with 13 seconds remaining, those semifinal plans to face Stanford were complete.
“We’ll have to make sure we’re ready and playing really well together,” Lappe said. “They’re the giants of the Pac-12 and we’ve got a shot at them.”
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CU in distant 2nd at NCAA Championship in Vermont
Mar 8th
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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