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Buffs Storm Past Arizona 55-42
Feb 16th
Story by Caryn Maconi, CUBuffs.com
TUCSON, Ariz. – So far this season, the No. 21 Colorado women’s basketball team hasn’t been fazed by road competition. On Friday night at the McKale Center, the Buffaloes showed they can create their own energy wherever they go.
Led by sophomore forward Jen Reese’s 15 points, CU rolled to its fourth consecutive win, 55-42, over the Arizona Wildcats. It was the second meeting this season for the Pac-12 Conference opponents, as the Buffs also defeated the Wildcats 79-36 in Boulder in January.
Sophomore Jen Reese led CU with 15 points
CU improves to 19-5 overall and 8-5 in the conference. Arizona’s loss, meanwhile, was its eighth straight, dropping the Wildcats to 11-13, 3-10.
The Buffs outrebounded their opponents 40-35, grabbing 16 offensive rebounds compared to the Wildcats’ 9. Redshirt freshman forward Arielle Roberson’s picked up a game-high seven rebounds, while Reese and freshman forward Jamee Swan added six each.
In the game’s first five minutes, Arizona forced five turnovers but failed to capitalize offensively, allowing CU to stay even through the 12:42 mark (11-11). CU sophomore guard Jasmine Sborov then put together an “and-1” play which sparked a 14-0 Colorado run to put the Buffs up 25-13.
“We knew we had to take a run, and we just had to keep going,” Reese said. “Our defense goes into our offense, and after a while we got great shots, everyone was finding gaps in either zone or man – so we just kept knocking those down and playing defense.”
Sophomore guard Lexy Kresl’s trey with 4:33 remaining gave CU its largest lead of the first half at 30-15, but the Wildcats responded with an 8-0 run of their own to end the half down only seven (30-23).
Buffs coach Linda Lappe said that with a comfortable lead, her team lost some of its sense of urgency and started to allow the Wildcats uncontested shots.
“You want to make sure that when you have an opponent down, you keep a foot on the gas pedal and keep going,” Lappe said. “I thought there were times when we let up a little bit.”
But as the Buffs turned up the heat out of the locker room, the Wildcats went cold. CU went on a 10-0 run to start the second half, holding Arizona scoreless for more than six minutes.
Arizona senior guard Davellyn Whyte, the team’s leading scorer, put up her first three points of the game and Arizona’s first of the half at the 13:36 mark. While Whyte would score another three to bring the Wildcats to within nine, the gap would never get closer than that.
Colorado ended the game shooting just 37.3 percent from the field, but held Arizona to 32.6 percent. CU also scored 14 points off of turnovers compared to AU’s nine and got 30 points in the paint compared to AU’s 14.
Lappe said her team was prepared specifically to guard Whyte, a player who averages 16.4 points per game to rank fifth in the Pac-12.
“I thought it was a team defensive effort,” Lappe said. “We rotated a lot of different players on her, and I thought it was great to have somebody fresh on her. We know what she can do offensively.”
Junior guard Brittany Wilson opened guarding the standout, but senior guard Chucky Jeffery and junior center Rachel Hargis took turns on her as well.
“Whyte’s a great player,” Reese said. “Stopping her was big – I mean, they had other players kind of stepped up, but our defense won the game for us.”
CU committed 20 turnovers but also had 11 steals, marking the team’s fifth straight game with 10 or more steals.
Still, Lappe said that despite the strong defense, that 20-turnover total was inexcusable for a Top 25 team.
“I told our team we should never have 20 turnovers in February, and that has to become a part of our program’s culture,” Lappe said. “It hasn’t been in the past, we’ve been OK with it in the past, but this year needs to be different.”
CU seeks its fourth conference road win on Sunday at Arizona State (2 p.m. MST).
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CU Men Throw A Blanket Of ‘D’ Over Wildcats
Feb 15th
By B.G Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – On a cold, snowy Colorado night, if the guys from the desert needed a blanket, their hosts were happy to oblige. The Buffaloes draped themselves over No. 9 Arizona, smothering the Pac-12 Conference’s highest-scoring team and leaving a delirious Coors Events Center with a resume-enhancing, think-Big-Dancing 71-58 win.
As nasty as CU’s defense was in limiting Arizona to its lowest point total of the season, the offense provided by sophomore Spender Dinwiddie and freshman Xavier Johnson was Valentine’s Night sweet for the Buffs. Dinwiddie finished with a game-high 21, Johnson with a career-high 19.
But they had loads of help in different areas. Sophomore guard Askia Booker added 10 points, two assists and three steals, and junior Andre Roberson contributed seven points and a game-best 13 rebounds to move past Cliff Meely into second place (978) on the school’s board list.
“It was a great atmosphere for college basketball,” CU coach Tad Boyle said. “The whole state of Colorado can be proud . . . this had nothing to do with revenge, but everything to do with respect for Arizona. They’ll win a lot of games as the season unfolds, but we will, too.”
Particularly if the Buffs continue to play ‘D’ as they have over the past month. The Wildcats came into the game averaging 76.2 points a game and featured two of the league’s top nine scorers in Mark Lyons (17.5) and Solomon Hill (15.4). Lyons got 11 points, Hill 12 on Thursday night as the Wildcats were limited to 42.3 percent from the field.
CU entered the night as the Pac-12 leader in scoring defense (64.2 ppg) and field goal percentage (40.6). But Boyle said his team’s defensive effort on Thursday was nothing short of a milestone in his time at CU.
“From start to finish, yes,” he said. “We made them work for everything. When we have a break down defensively now, our players know it and it burns at them, which is a great sign. We were dialed in – and we made some shots.”
“Some,” indeed. The Buffs checked out at 50 percent from the field, including 59.1 percent in the second half when the Wildcats cut a 15-point deficit to nine on two occasions and closed to within six with 10:35 to play. Dinwiddie scored 19 of his total in the final 20 minutes and added a career-best seven assists.
Of his assists, Dinwiddie said: “I didn’t play too much different . . . I have got to give thanks to this person (Xavier Johnson); he made a ton of shots, a bunch of threes. Without him I don’t get those assists, a lot of those are him.”
The Buffs finished nine of 17 from behind the three-point arc, with Johnson going four-for-five and Dinwiddie two-for-five. Freshman reserve Xavier Talton each hit their only three-point attempt and Booker was good on one of his four trey tries. Talton’s trey was only his second of the season, but it was undoubtedly his biggest, coming after Arizona had closed to 45-39.
In winning its fourth straight and sixth of its last seven games, CU (17-7, 7-5) avenged its 92-83 overtime loss in Tucson on Jan. 3. Arizona (20-4, 8-4) lost its second consecutive game and was shoved out of a first-place Pac-12 tie with UCLA and Oregon.
The Buffs, defeating a Top 25 team for the second time in three games, improved to 11-1 in the CEC this season and went to 42-5 at home under Boyle. CU won 48-47 at No. 19 Oregon a week ago.
On Valentine’s Night, the CEC was the place to be. The sellout crowd (11,120) included John Elway and former Buffs linebacker Matt Russell, now Elway’s right hand man with the Broncos; former CU kicker Mason Crosby (Green Bay) and his wife; and former Buffs hoopsters Alec Burks (Utah Jazz) and Shannon Sharpe.
With the building’s decibel level cranked past deafening, they watched a first half that saw CU start by missing consecutive layups on consecutive possessions, then settle in and stifle Arizona.
By halftime, CU had matched its largest lead of the first 20 minutes, with its 30-23 advantage produced by a 10-3 run over the half’s last 6:12. Johnson and Booker got the surge started with back-to-back treys, followed by Shane Harris-Tunks’ baby hook and a Roberson stuff.
Johnson (12) was CU’s only player in double figures, but the Buffs’ defense allowed the offense any slack it needed. No Arizona player reached double figures in the first 20 minutes, with Lyons and Angelo Chol managing six points each.
The second-half start was nothing like the first for the Buffs. Scoring the half’s first eight points – three free throws by Dinwiddie, a Dinwiddie stuff and a trey by Roberson – they went up by 15 (38-23) with 17:52 to play.
The Wildcats needed a timeout – and maybe it helped. They got their first points of the half on a trey by Lyons, then another by Nick Johnson and cut the Buffs’ lead to 38-29 with 16:05 remaining.
CU’s answer: a long triple by Dinwiddie as the shot clock wound down and a step-back jumper by Booker. The Buffs’ lead went to 14 (43-29), but the Wildcats got two of three free throws from Grant Jerrett and a Lyons layup to close to 43-33.
Arizona pulled as close as six points (45-39) before Talton drained his trey, Dinwiddie following with a spinning layup, then adding a triple to restore a 14-point (53-39) Buffs advantage with just under 10 minutes to play.
Boyle lauded Booker for urging his coach to leave Talton in. “I was ready to put ‘Ski’ in, but ‘Ski’ said let him (Talton) go,” Boyle said. “I played him another three or four minutes . . . when you’ve got players like that, putting their best interests behind the team’s, you’ve got a chance to have something special. I’m proud of ‘Ski;’ that wouldn’t have happened last year.”
A layup by Talton 2 minutes later pushed CU ahead by 15 (56-41), giving the Buffs their largest lead of the night. Over the final 7 minutes, Arizona trimmed its deficit to nine points twice, but Johnson answered the second surge with back-to-back treys. When Booker hit a one-handed leaner, CU had another 15-point lead (68-53) with 2:38 remaining.
The Buffs had watched a 17-point lead evaporate in Tucson, but no way it would happen in the rematch. All that remained was for the CU student body to rush court – and this time no one questioned whether it was justified.
CU hosts Arizona State Saturday (7 p.m., ESPNU), and Boyle said the Buffs need another shot of Thursday night’s CEC energy: “We need that same kind of atmosphere; they (fans) were part of this victory.”
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Dinwiddie, CU Men Rally To Defeat Beavers
Feb 11th
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Nothing came easy for the Colorado Buffaloes in Oregon, but they might like it that way – especially Spencer Dinwiddie.
On a night marked by his perfection, the Buffs rallied behind their stellar sophomore guard here Sunday to beat Oregon State 72-68 and sweep their two-game trip in the Northwest.
Dinwiddie’s long-range shooting and free throw accuracy brought CU back from a seven-point second-half deficit and kept the Buffs in prime position for a February ascent in the Pac-12 Conference.
Spencer Dinwiddie
The difference Sunday night in OSU’s antiquated Gill Coliseum, said CU coach Tad Boyle: “We had Spencer Dinwiddie and they didn’t.”
Dinwiddie scored 17 of his 24 points in the second half, helping CU to go above .500 (6-5, 16-7 overall) for the first time this season in Pac-12 play.
Dinwiddie turned in a night of perfect shooting. He hit four-of-four from beyond the three-point arc (six-of-six overall from the field) and eight-of-eight from the free throw line in the final 20 minutes, including six-of-six in the last 1:41.
“I can’t remember if I’ve ever shot like that before,” Dinwiddie said. “But every shot you take you think you’re going to make. It was one of those nights.”
CU also got double-figure scoring from freshman Josh Scott (17) and senior Sabatino Chen (10).
Oregon State (2-9, 12-12) was led by Roberto Nelson with 21 points. Teammate Ahmad Starks had 20, 17 of them in the first half before CU tightened its defense on him.
The Buffs return to the Coors Events Center this week. On Thursday they face No. 7 Arizona (8 p.m., Pac-12 Network), with Arizona State visiting on Saturday (7 p.m., ESPNU).
CU started with a feverish pace, hitting its first six shots before finally missing and going up by 13 points (19-6) on a pair of free throws by Askia Booker. But the Buffs hot hands didn’t remain that way.
A 13-4 run pulled the Beavers to within 27-25 and Starks took over from there, hitting consecutive treys to tie the score at 31-31 then adding a third to give Oregon its first lead, 34-33.
The half ended that way, and whatever early momentum the Buffs had was swept away.
Starks finished the half with 17 points, hitting five of his nine three-point attempts. And it wasn’t like the Buffs hadn’t been warned: Their scouting report on Starks said he was most dangerous going to his left off the dribble – and that’s what he did on four of his five first-half treys.
In the second half, said Boyle, CU wanted to deny him the ball – and Booker helped answer that challenge. Overall, Boyle said his team didn’t play its best game – just as it didn’t in a 48-47 win on Thursday night at Oregon.
“But you’re seeing this team grow up before your eyes,” he added. “When you don’t play your best in two road games and still win, it shows you something about your players.”
Added junior forward Andre Roberson, who finished with a career-best five steals to go with his 10 rebounds and seven points: “We’ve got heart. It showed in Oregon and it showed here tonight.”
Andre Roberson
CU didn’t have a player in double figures in the first 20 minutes and was outrebounded 21-17 – 39-30 for the game. The Buffs shot 41.4 percent from the field, the Beavers 45.6. But CU got 21 points off of that many OSU turnovers while committing only nine. The Buffs also had 13 second-chance points to the Beavers’ seven.
Nelson, tied for the conference scoring lead at 18.4 points a game, had only four first-half points. But he opened the second half with a long trey from the right wing, giving the Beavers a 37-33 advantage.
The Buffs caught and passed them with a 6-0 run, going ahead 39-37 on a pair of Dinwiddie free throws with 17:51 to play. From there, it was back and forth for the next 3 minutes, with neither team able to take more than three-point lead until Joe Burton converted a three-point play with 14:22 left to send the Beavers ahead 51-47 – their largest lead of the night.
And it got larger. When Starks drained another triple from just left of the top of the key, Oregon was up 56-49 – and with 12:50 remaining the Buffs were entering dangerous territory. No matter; they had been there before and survived.
CU crept to within two (56-54) on a three-pointer by Dinwiddie over Oregon’s 2-3 zone and a transition basket by Scott. Just under 3 minutes later, Dinwiddie got another triple and the Buffs suddenly were down just a point (58-57).
Then a short shootout began.
After Oregon freshman Olaf Schaftenaar answered with a trey, restoring the Beavers’ four-point lead, Dinwiddie struck again from beyond the arc and pulled the Buffs to within 63-62. Roberson made one of two free throws with 3:23 showing to tie the score at 63-63.
CU freshman Xavier Johnson’s tip-dunk at the 2:20 mark put CU ahead (65-63) for the first time in nearly 14 minutes, and the Buffs might have been flashing back to their final-minute win (48-47) in Eugene on Thursday night.
Dinwiddie made both ends of a one-and-one with 1:41 left, giving CU a 67-63 lead. But on the other end, he fouled Nelson beyond the arc, and Nelson’s three free throws cut the Buffs’ lead to 67-66.
At 1:10, Boyle called a timeout. With 3 seconds showing on the shot clock and 52.9 on the game clock, Dinwiddie was fouled and hit both ends of his one-and-one for a 69-66 lead.
Oregon missed, Roberson rebounded and Booker was fouled with 29.1 seconds to play. Making one of two foul shots, he put CU ahead 70-66, but Nelson scored in the lane to pull Oregon to within 70-68 with 16.7 seconds left.
Fouled by Nelson on the inbounds pass, Dinwiddie hit both free throws and the Buffs were up 72-68 with 14.2 seconds showing. Oregon’s Eric Moreland missed at point blank range, Roberson rebounded and was tied up.
The possession arrow favored the Buffs – and this one was done.
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