CU Men’s Basketball
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.”
CU MBB: Dinwiddie lights up the Rams for a Buff victory
Dec 4th
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
FORT COLLINS – Spencer Dinwiddie has little difficulty believing in himself or his game. His lone hang-up – and it’s receding by the day, maybe by the hour – is knowing when to turn it up and take over.
Just past the halfway mark of Tuesday’s first half in frenetic Moby Arena, Dinwiddie sensed he should be doing both. So he did. Getting help in a second-half stretch run from freshman Jaron Hopkins, Dinwiddie pushed Colorado past rival Colorado State 67-62 for the Buffs eighth consecutive win.
“I’m proud of our guys and Spencer was the big difference,” CU coach Tad Boyle said. “He was the best player on the floor and it wasn’t even close.”
In passing 1,000 points for his career, Dinwiddie finished with a game-best 28 – one off a career-high set in last season’s win against CSU in Boulder. But Tuesday night’s production might have been more impressive; Dinwiddie scored 19 of his total in the second half as the Buffs were trying to overcome themselves, hit seven of seven second-half free throws (he was 11-of-11 for the night), and scored seven of CU’s final nine points.
The 6-6 junior also capably defended CSU’s Daniel Bejarano, who surpassed his 13.6 average with 15 points but hit only four of 15 from the field. Redshirt freshman Wes Gordon held CSU’s leading scorer, J.J. Avila (19.0), to 16 points, and like Bejarano, Avila didn’t do much that wasn’t contested by the 6-9 Gordon. Avila needed 19 attempts to make his four field goals.
Boyle called Gordon’s defense “terrific” and said the Buffs “battled . . . we made plays when we had to make plays and got stops when we had to get stops. It wasn’t a pretty game offensively when you go three for 19 from three (point range). I mean it’s tough – and there were some good looks.”
Two of CU’s three treys came from Hopkins, who scored eight straight points – a steal/stuff, two consecutive threes – in the second half when the Buffs were rallying from a five-point deficit. He finished with 10 points, and teammate Askia Booker added 12 – including a pair of free throws with three seconds to play that sealed CU’s first win at Moby Arena since Dec. 22, 2007.
Boyle called Hopkins’ steal and slam “the biggest play of the game.” And while Hopkins wouldn’t go that far, he did concur, “It was pretty big. I read the play; I’m pretty good at reading the plays.”
Tuesday night’s two-for-two trey performance followed a three-for-three three-point Saturday at Air Force. “Shooting is all about confidence,” Boyle said. “You’ve got to feel like you’re going to make it and he’s feeling it right now.”
The Buffs handed the Rams their first home loss this season and now have beaten all three Front Range schools – CSU, Air Force, Wyoming – in the same season. That hadn’t happened in six previous tries.
“We want and expect to be the most dominant team in the region,” Boyle said. “But you can’t do it by talking about it; you’ve got to go out and do it.”
The game’s first 10 minutes hardly qualified as an offensive clinic . . . maybe clinically dead was a better fit. At the 7:38 mark the Buffs and Rams had combined to make seven of their 31 field goal attempts, with 14 turnovers between them (seven each).
CU finally cracked the ugly code and took a two-point lead (14-12) on a pair of Dinwiddie free throws – that’s when he sensed he should be taking over – and proceeded on a 7-0 run to take its largest lead of the half (19-12) with 7 minutes before intermission. After his pair of foul shots, Dinwiddie added a three-pointer and Xavier Talton hit a jumper to get the Buffs to 19.
“We weren’t scoring very well,” Dinwiddie said. “We had 12 points with about eight minutes to go (in the first half). That’s when I decided to get more aggressive. If we had been up 20 and Josh (Scott) was working and ‘Ski’ was working, you might have seen another ten-point, five-assist type game. When that’s not happening it’s my job to get more aggressive . . . I still am trying to get guys open shots, but if they’re not falling then it’s my job to score.”
And that awareness is what Boyle says makes Dinwiddie special. He had told Dinwiddie on Monday that being more aggressive would be necessary in Moby, adding, “Keep your mouth shut before the game, let your play do the talking . . . he’s smart; he’s going to do whatever this team needs him to do to help win games. It’s awful nice to have a point guard like that.”
Dinwiddie still has flashes of guilt about not being aggressive early enough in the Buffs’ only loss – 72-60 against Baylor in the season opener. “I waited too late in the Baylor game,” he said. “That’s why that loss is still really hard for me and I feel like I let the team down.”
Although his take-over in Tuesday night’s first half got the Buffs (kind of) untracked offensively, the Rams led 34-30 at the break. CU’s nine first-half turnovers were a season-high, with CSU at the same number. The Buffs committed only five more in the second half, but the Rams matched their first-half total and had 18 for the game, leading to 18 Buffs points.
The pace – and the efficiency – smoothed out in the opening minutes of the second half. After CSU extended its lead to six on two occasions, CU rallied behind Dinwiddie and Booker, outscoring the Rams 10-4 to knot the score at 40-40 on a Dinwiddie layup with 16:50 to play. Maybe ugly was done: The Buffs opened the half by hitting five of their first seven field goal attempts.
When Dinwiddie converted two free throws, CU was back in front, 42-40. But ugly wasn’t done: Over the next 31/2 minutes, the Buffs missed six shots until Scott scored on a put-back for a 44-44 tie. The rivals stayed within two or four points of each other until Bejarano’s triple from the left wing pushed the Rams up 51-46 with 10:56 remaining.
The Buffs pulled to within 53-52 on Hopkins’ steal and stuff at the 7:12 mark. Just under 4 minutes later, Hopkins answered again, draining a trey from the right corner to tie the score at 55-55. It was only CU’s second make from behind the arc in 18 attempts, but Hopkins was feeling it.
He canned his second straight trey (and his eighth straight point) to put CU up 58-57, then fed Dinwiddie for a layup and a subsequent three-point play for a 61-58 Buffs lead with 2:54 showing. Dinwiddie drove the lane for another layup (63-58) and CU appeared to be in control.
But the Rams weren’t rolling. Carlton Hurst hit a put-back (63-60) and Joe DiCiman went to the free throw line after Xavier Johnson fouled out and hit one of two free throws (63-61). The Buffs couldn’t control DiCiman’s miss, and Avila was fouled by Scott with 24.8 seconds to play.
Avila hit one of two free throws (63-62) and CU again put the game in Dinwiddie’s hands. With 14.3 seconds left, he hit both ends of a one-and-one (65-62), leaving CSU desperate but not done.
Avila tried a straight away trey that flirted with the net, but Booker controlled the air ball, was fouled on his rush downcourt and hit two free throws to seal it. After Booker hit his first free throw, Dinwiddie walked toward one CSU student section talking to them more than himself.
“I was in a very, very, very polite manner going to the student section that was heckling me constantly during the game and telling them to please be quiet,” he said. “We just won the ball game and now they have nothing to say to me.”
The Rams had the Buffs’ full attention, and Hopkins said he and his fellow freshmen were well-prepped for the Moby madness: “Beau Gamble talked a lot about how it’s going to be crazy and it’s our first real away game. He was right on the money. It was a tough atmosphere to play in and I look forward to playing in more atmospheres like that.”
Although not as hostile, the atmosphere will be even more raucous at the Coors Events Center on Saturday when No. 6 Kansas visits (1:20 p.m., ESPN2). The game, Dinwiddie understated, “is big. It’s about us taking that next step. We believe inside the locker room we’re top 25 but we haven’t proved it. That game is kind of what can put a stamp on our season.”
“It’s really big for us,” added Hopkins. “That’s a game the coaches are looking forward to and we’re looking forward to it as players, too. It’s really big for us and our confidence is pretty high.”
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CU MBB: Scott returns home to rousing ovation
Dec 1st
Beats AFA 81-57
COLORADO SPRINGS — After more than a year of waiting, Josh Scott finally returned home on Saturday. An afternoon that began with a rousing ovation from the Clune Arena faithful culminated with one of the finest performances of his young career.
The 6-10 sophomore from nearby Monument had 16 points and a season-high 13 rebounds as the Buffs led the Air Force Falcons from wire-to-wire en route to a convincing 81-57 victory. Scott reached his third double-double of the year half way through the second half and then sat for the game’s final five minutes while the Buffs coasted to their seventh straight victory.
“It feels good, it’s good to show up for the home crowd,” said Scott. “I won’t lie, so it’s nice.”
After being held to zero points and just three rebounds for the first 12:17 of the game, Scott sprang off the mat to score 16 points and grab 10 boards over the remainder of the afternoon. His tenacious and spirited play in front of the hometown fans helped break a close game wide open in the second half.
Scott’s first bucket came at the 7:43 mark of the first half, as the Buffs were clinging to a tenuous nine-point lead. By the time he scored his final bucket nearly 18 minutes later, the Buffs lead had ballooned to 28 points mostly on the strength of the big man’s domination of an undersized and overwhelmed Falcon front court.
“Once I got the ball in the high-post, I was just looking for Josh down low and we executed well,” said freshman forward Wesley Gordon.
Scott’s play may have been the highlight of the game, but it was an effective Colorado defense that won it. The Buffs out-rebounded the Falcons 42-25 and forced them into a resounding 18 turnovers as AFA was held to a season-low 57 points. The 57 points were the fewest the Buffs have allowed in a road game since they gave up 47 at Oregon last year.
Despite all of the Air Force mistakes, the turnover issues were far from one-sided. The Buffs turned the ball over nine times themselves in the first half and it was the sloppy play that kept Air Force in the game for more than a half. The Falcons, who had more than twice as many turnovers (12) as assists (5), were down only 10 at halftime.
CU coach Tad Boyle later attributed the first-half carelessness to an Air Force zone that took his young team more than a half to decipher. After a few halftime adjustments, the Buffs then turned the ball over just five times in the second half.
“It’s not fun playing against the zone for 40 minutes,” said Boyle. “We tell our guys all the time, the reason they are playing a zone is because they don’t feel like they can guard you (in man-to-man defense). So, we have to be patient, and get the ball moved. Our guys would rather play 40 minutes against the (man-to-man defense), but we’re going to see a lot of the zone. It’s just the way college basketball is being played now, and people trying to stay out of foul trouble.”
Scott wasn’t the only Buff player who triumphantly returned to his hometown on Saturday. Gordon, who also hails from the Colorado Springs area, scored six points, pulled down three rebounds and had two blocks in his own successful return to the city.
“It was a big game for them, in front of their friends and family,” said Boyle. “Colorado Springs, and this community, means a lot to both those young men and their families – their families are obviously both still here and part of this community. So, it was big for them, and I was happy that they both played well. So, it was a good, good feel-good victory for both those young guys.”
The game began under a barrage of Askia Booker jump shots as the trigger-happy junior hit his four shots, two of them from three-point range, and scored eight of the team’s first 10 points. Booker’s success from the field came as the rest of the team combined for just four field goals in the game’s first 12 minutes.
Booker’s hot early shooting helped the team weather the initial struggles of the other go-to players on offense and gave them each time to find their own rhythm in a slow-paced first half. Booker then scored just three points after the game’s first four minutes, but by end of his hot streak the rest of the CU offense had gained their footing and was more than happy to take the weight off Booker’s shoulders.
“It was nice to see (Booker) come out and hit some shots and get us kind of going, and then we kind of took it from there,” said Boyle. “We came out first part of the second half and made some buckets and extended that thing and never let them get back in the game.”
After a season-opening loss to the Baylor Bears, the Buffs have now won seven straight for the first time since January 2011 as they now head into the gauntlet of their non-conference schedule.
The Buffs will travel to Fort Collins to play a solid Colorado State team on Tuesday at Moby Arena, where they haven’t won since 2007. CU will then play two of the following three games against teams currently ranked in the top five in the country – hosting No. 2 Kansas on Saturday, Dec. 7, then taking on No. 5 Oklahoma State in Las Vegas on Dec. 21.
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