Posts tagged Boulder
FLY FISHING THE SEASONS IN COLORADO by Ron Baird— just in time for Spring
Mar 8th
FLY FISHING THE SEASONS IN COLORADO
An Essential Guide for Fishing through the winter, Spring, Summer and Fall
Author Ron Baird
“The single most important factor that determines a fly angler’s approach to a stretch of water isn’t the time of day, nor is it a hatch of insects or even the character of the water itself. It’s the season. From spring and summer through fall and winter, changes in weather dictate changes in strategy. This can be intimidating. If fish were biting here a month ago, why are things so different now? Where to go where they might be better? The seasonal variation of fishing strategy is necessary knowledge for any fly angler, and Fly Fishing the Seasons: Colorado is the first-ever guidebook to address this subject.”
Focusing on the world-class waters of the Centennial State, and with full-color photos throughout, this book comprises four equal sections—summer, fall, winter, and spring—each with a general locator map and each covering five to ten primary locations. The best waters to fish in this particular month or span of months? What flies and techniques to use? Look no further than Fly Fishing the Seasons in Colorado.”
Ron Baird worked for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, where he researched and wrote about fishing spots for anglers visiting our state. His first book was Fishing Colorado. His new book Fly Fishing the Seasons in Colorado was released just in time for Christmas. It is available in book stores and fly shops all over Colorado or world-wide on Amazon.com
Mr. Baird is the news editor for Boulder Channel 1 and Channel One Networks
WBB: Buffs take it to wire, but lose
Mar 2nd
Brooks: Buffs’ Last-Half Magic Fades In Loss To Trojans
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.
Ashley Wilson finishes her CU tenure with a strong showing
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.”
Rachel Hargis, Coach Lappe’s very first recruit at CU, finished on a strong note
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
MBB: Buffs choke down the stretch
Mar 1st
Buffs Falter In 75-64 Pac-12 Loss
by B.G. Brooks
SALT LAKE CITY – For the Colorado men’s basketball team, the start of second halves has become the beginning of the end. The Buffaloes’ all-too-familiar script for failure played out again Saturday in a 75-64 Pac-12 Conference loss to Utah.
After a 30-30 halftime tie, the Utes outscored the Buffs 15-2 to open the second half and take a 45-32 lead. But that was a mere continuation of the last stages of the first 20 minutes. Over those final 4-plus minutes and the first 7-plus of the second half, Utah outscored its visitors from the other side of the Rockies 23-2.
And Senior Day at the Jon M. Huntsman Center was all but a wrap.
“Right now second halves are baffling when it comes to the Buffs,” coach Tad Boyle said. “This is three out of the last four games when you go back to UCLA . . . same way. They just had their way with us offensively in the second half – Arizona and now Utah. It happens once you think, OK, maybe somebody got hot, it’s an aberration. But it’s not . . . we’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror and understand that right now we’re not good enough in the second half defensively.”
In an 88-61 home loss to No. 4 Arizona last weekend, the Buffs allowed the Wildcats to shoot 84.9 percent from the field in the second half. Saturday, the Utes made 70.8 percent of their second-half field goal attempts. Utah also outrebounded CU by three after losing the board battle by 18 in Boulder in the Buffs’ 79-75 overtime win.
Boyle called that a “big swing,” but pointed to porous defense as a culprit for even the slightest board advantage. “There’s not a lot of rebounds to be had,” he said. “That’s why it gets down to defense. When you’re taking the ball out of the next 70 or 85 percent of the time – holy cow, you better be making a lot of shots. I don’t think there’s an offense out there in college basketball to overcome those numbers.”
The Buffs (20-9, 9-7) closed to within nine points twice in the final 10 minutes Saturday but came no closer as the Utes (19-9, 8-8) improved to 18-2 at home this season. The Utes have now won 21 of 24 at the Huntsman Center dating to last season.
Jordan Loveridge and Delon Wright led Utah with 21 points each, while CU had two players in double figures – Josh Scott with 17 and Xavier Johnson with 10. Askia Booker finished with four points, a pair of first-half free throws and one field goal in the second half.
Freshman Dustin Thomas, who went scoreless in the teams’ first meeting last month in Boulder, hit a 3-pointer to open Saturday’s scoring and got CU’s first seven points as the Buffs took a 7-2 lead.
“I came out with confidence. I knew we had to jump on them early and I wanted to do what I could do for the team,” Thomas said.
CU led by as many as eight (30-22) before an 8-0 Utah run – courtesy of treys by Loveridge and Brandon Taylor – produced a 30-30 halftime tie. The Utes never led in the first half, and it was the first time this season the Buffs have been tied at intermission.
Then came another second-half swoon . . .
“We turned the ball over and we didn’t get stops. Those two things combined hurt; that’s the key to the second half,” Scott said, referring to CU’s five first-half turnovers and 11 in the second half. Utah converted those 16 miscues into 19 points.
Thomas said the Utes “just came out real aggressive” in the second half. “We didn’t come out and match their aggressiveness. We have to do that to every opponent we face; if we do that we’ll be all right. When we’re down we have to come together on the court instead of looking at each other.”
Another second-half failure, said Boyle, was not running the offense through Scott. Boyle said the Buffs might be understanding they have to play through Scott, not meaning that the 6-10 post must score on every possession, “But we have to play inside-out. When we do we’re pretty good. But the offensive struggles bleeding over into the defensive part of the floor has got to stop. We’re just not good enough defensively, though.”
CU finished the afternoon shooting 21-of-53 (39.6 percent) while Utah shot 59.6 percent from the field (28-of-47) – including the blistering 70.8 percent (17-of-24) in the final 20 minutes.
Among CU’s biggest first-half difficulties was finishing at the rim. The Buffs missed half a dozen point-blank attempts, enabling Utah to hold a 16-10 advantage in paint points and finish with a 38-22 advantage.
Booker finished the first half with only a pair of free throws and two fouls that sent him to the bench at the 7:12 mark. Also encountering first-half foul problems were Thomas and Johnson, who finished the game with four each.
Thomas said the early fouls on him, Booker and Johnson “hurt us a lot. We got up early in the first half and those fouls hurt. But we have to play through that.”
But with the score tied at 30 at intermission, the second 20 minutes (and the win) were there for the taking – and the Utes quickly took advantage. They scored the second half’s first nine points for a 39-30 lead. CU took a timeout to regroup with 17:26 to play, but promptly turned it over and Wright converted a traditional three-point play for the nine-point lead.
Scott called the turnovers “something we’ve talked about a lot. It’s inexcusable. We have to go back to the drawing board.” He also said Wright, the Pac-12 leader in steals, “got us a couple of times and made some easy baskets. I thought that was a key.”
CU finally got its first second-half points on a left-handed Scott hook with 16:20 left. But by then the Utes were up 39-32 and about to pull away for good.
Utah pushed its advantage to 45-32 on a straightaway 3-pointer by Loveridge with 13:52 to play and extended its lead to as many as 17 twice in the final 5 minutes.
Boyle said a lack of mental toughness continues to degrade the Buffs’ effort and that a glance at “every league in America” will show the top teams as the top defensive teams – and that’s where the Buffs are falling short.
“Our mental toughness – when things don’t go well for us on offense . . . it has to get better,” he said, adding a few corrections have to be made “to get it right. We don’t have to change the makeup . . . we’re not playing consistently enough and mentally tough enough.”
CU finishes out the regular season with road games next week at Stanford (Wednesday) and California (Saturday). The Pac-12 Tournament is March 12-15 in Las Vegas.
