Posts tagged Chucky Jeffery
CU women looking forward to playing an old opponent in NCAA tourney
Mar 19th
CU is matched against former Big Eight/12 Conference foe Kansas in its first game on Saturday, approximately 4:40 p.m., at the Coors Events Center. The Buffs (25-6) are a fifth seed, the Jayhawks (18-13) a 12th seed. A win would send CU against the winner of Saturday’s No. 4 South Carolina vs. No. 13 South Dakota on Monday night, at 7:30 p.m., at the CEC. South Carolina and South Dakota State will tip at 2:10 p.m. on Saturday at Coors.
“I’m excited to play a Big 12 opponent; we spent a lot of years in the Big 12 and the Big Eight,” said coach Linda Lappe, who in her third season guided the Buffs to their first NCAA Tournament appearance 2004 and the 13th in school history.
Lappe initially believed another former Big 8/12 conference foe – Nebraska – might wind up matched against her team. She said she was “excited for that opportunity (but) Kansas is going to be a tough opponent; I think anybody who makes it into the NCAA is going to be high level competition.”
During their final years in the Big 12, the Jayhawks had the Buffs’ number – a 7-1 record against them in their last eight meetings. In Lappe’s first season (2010-11) at CU, KU won all three games (two regular season, one postseason tournament).
CU senior guard Chucky Jeffery can recall KU’s domination before the Buffs said goodbye and headed for the Pac-12.
“Oh yeah, we remember,” Jeffery said at a Selection Show gathering Monday afternoon. “As soon as our name and Kansas came up on the screen, we all looked at each other like, ‘This is our time right here’. So we’re excited to have them come and play on our home floor, it’s definitely going to be a good game.
“I think, like coach Lappe said, we are a better team on our home floor so they (Kansas) can bring as many fans as they need, but I think we are going to have a pretty good turnout and play well.”
The Buffs were one of four Pac-12 teams to make the NCAA Tournament, joining Stanford, California and UCLA. Those teams were responsible for CU’s five conference losses, with the Cardinal ousting the Buffs from the league’s postseason tournament. Stanford is a No. 1 seed, Cal a No. 2 and UCLA a No. 3.
Lappe said her team’s seeding in the 64-team field was near what she anticipated: “We were expecting a five or six, right in that area, so we’re happy with that. The committee took a look at what we did all season long and I felt like that was a great seed with the wins we were able to get and having no bad losses.
“I know the committee takes a lot of things into consideration so you never quite know where you are going to be, but we are happy with that seed. It shows the committee gives us a lot of respect.”
The Buffs’ 25 wins are the women’s program’s most since the 1995-96 team finished 26-9. CU’s all-time NCAA Tournament record is 17-12, which includes an 8-2 mark in first-round games (9-3 in opening games, reflecting two first-round byes).
When Boulder was chosen for a first-round site, CU’s goal was to be included in the four-team field. Lappe called playing at the CEC, where her team was 15-0 this season, “a huge advantage; it’s a place we’ve had success all year, we’ve had great fan support. Being able to have our fans come out and support us, I think it is going to be one of the best first and second round games in terms of attendance that you are going to find out there.
“I think having that support always helps you, but you can’t take that for granted, you still have to come out and you still have to play well. But to be able to sleep in our own beds and to be in our comfort zones and not have to travel will be something that really helps us out, and obviously I like the altitude as well.”
By the time they tip off in Saturday’s first game, the Buffs will be on the last day of a 14-day break. They haven’t played since March 9, when they lost 61-47 to Stanford in the semifinals of the Pac-12 tournament in Seattle.
Lappe said the layoff can be viewed in “a few different ways. We’ve used it as some time to get some rest, and get some time away, so I think that is going to be very beneficial for us. I think we feel good, our legs are going to feel great. Obviously there’s that period of time if you have a long layoff where you haven’t competed, but we have practiced hard, we have a great group of practice guys that come in everyday and help us out.
“The most important part is what we do this week. This week will be like any normal week, we have four days to practice and then we will be getting ready to play on Saturday, so it’s a pretty typical week in terms of what were used to in the Pac-12.”
Jeffery, the team’s leading scorer (13.9 ppg) and rebounder (8.3 rpg), will close out her home career with an NCAA appearance she’s dreamed of.
“It means a lot,” she said. “It just shows how far we have come as a program, and how great the coaches have been at turning it around. And it’s all a tribute to my team, we have good players and we play together and we’ve had a great season. It’s just really satisfying to go out as a senior like this, and I just want to thank my teammates and my coaches for that.”
In the days preceding Monday’s Selection Show, Jeffery and the Buffs engaged in their own “bracketology” and tried to determine who they might play and the other two teams that would land at the CEC.
“We’ve been trying to figure that out for a long time, looking at the brackets and stuff like that, but you can’t really know,” she said. “We were way off (on their projections), we thought we were going to be up with Notre Dame, but we were off. We’re excited though.”
If the Buffs win their two home games, the Irish still could be in their future. Notre Dame is the No. 1 seed in the Norfolk bracket but plays its opening games in Iowa City. CU and Notre Dame would play in a Sweet 16 game on March 30.
The Buffs reaching the NCAA Tournament has caused a quandary for the family of CU redshirt freshman forward Arielle Roberson. Her brother, Andre, is a junior forward on the CU men’s team, which plays Illinois Friday in Austin, Texas, in the men’s tournament.
In high school in San Antonio, Arielle said she and Andre competed in the playoffs at the same time, creating a similar dilemma in the Roberson family. She called this week’s NCAA play at different sites “a great opportunity for both (of us), but it’s another competition in the family – who’s coming to who’s game.”
Maybe this is what they can hope for: Arielle and the CU women win two in Boulder and advance to Norfolk, Va.; Andre and the CU men win two in Austin and advance to Washington, D.C. That’s close enough for a close family to commute.
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CU women fall to Stanford
Mar 10th
Story by B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor, CUBuffs.com
The usual script for the CU women is to struggle in the first half and come back in the second to win. Stanford reversed the script Saturday night.
For just over a half Saturday night, the Colorado Buffaloes showed they could stay with powerful Stanford. Staying with Chiney Ogwumike and remaining in touch with their game proved to be much more difficult for the Buffs.
Behind Ogwumike’s 25 points and 19 rebounds, the top-seeded Cardinal finally pulled away from the fourth-seeded Buffs for a 61-47 win and advanced to Sunday’s Pac-12 Conference Tournament championship game at KeyArena.
The fourth-ranked Cardinal (30-2) plays No. 3 seed UCLA (25-6), which upset No. 5 seed California 70-58 in Saturday night’s first semifinal.
“I’m proud of how we played; we played hard the whole game,” CU coach Linda Lappe said. “I liked how intense we were for about 30 minutes and then I thought our missed shots began to affect our demeanor . . .
“Stanford is a good team for a reason; they execute when they need to execute. We’ve got to understand that teams that are good are going to make runs and not beat themselves. We have to go get it. As you get in the NCAA Tournament you understand it’s one-and-done . . . I have no doubt we’ll be ready to go.”
Losing for the first time in 11 games, the No. 18 Buffs (25-6) now will wait until Selection Sunday to see their NCAA future – and it should be bright. CU hosts first- and second-round NCAA Women’s Tournament games at the Coors Events Center on March 23-25. Chances appear good that the Buffs will open the tournament on their home court.
The Buffs held a 28-27 halftime lead Saturday night, with their defense to thank. The Cardinal shot just 28.1 percent (9-for-32) in the first 20 minutes, and had it not been for Ogwumike, Stanford would have been deep in the woods with no way out.
The 6-4 junior was scoreless for the game’s first nine minutes, but once she got going, the Buffs had a hard time handling her.
“She’s good . . . a tough load in there,” Lappe said. “She plays a lot of minutes, she’s fit, strong and has a good skill set. I thought we made her work for everything she got – that was one of our goals. I thought in the end her rebounding hurt more than anything else.”
Lappe was right about the Buffs making Ogwumike work for her points. In her 39 minutes, Ogwumike hit just nine of her 24 field goal attempts but was 7-for-10 from the free throw line. The Cardinal attempted 29 free throws, making 22, while the Buffs only attempted four, making three of those.
Over the first half’s last 11 minutes Ogwumike scored 14 of the Cardinal’s 18 points. And by halftime she had a double-double, collecting 10 of Stanford’s 21 first-half rebounds. The Cardinal won the board battle 43-37. Stanford also outscored CU 26-16 in the paint and got 18 points off of the Buffs’ 15 turnovers. The Cardinal committed 10, resulting in 13 Buffs points.
Stanford, said CU senior Chucky Jeffery, “started getting the ball into Chiney and started knocking down shots . . . we weren’t making shots and that got us in a little slump. We couldn’t sustain anything and couldn’t get on a run to answer. Bottom line is we couldn’t knock down our shots.”
CU junior post Rachel Hargis opened on Ogwumike and was doing a credible job until picking up her second foul. The defensive chore then went to, among others, redshirt freshman Arielle Roberson and true freshman Jamee Swan.
“She’s a really good player, very strong, physical and active,” Roberson said. “We managed and held our own for a time.”
During that time, the Buffs needed to be more efficient offensively, but couldn’t. “Defensively we were outstanding,” Lappe said. “Without the last few minutes there we held them to about 55 points (it was 55-42 with about six minutes remaining). And when you hold Stanford to 55 points you have to win. We missed a lot of good shots, we took good shots, but we didn’t knock them down. You can only hold them for so long before they start to build that gap.”
With a team-high 19 points, Jeffery moved into sixth place on the school’s career scoring list. Roberson added 10 points and eight rebounds, and junior Brittany Wilson added contributed six points, three of them on the 100th three-pointer of her career.
If the Buffs were leading by only a point at halftime, they believed they were sending a larger message. At halftime of their first meeting in Boulder, CU trailed by 17. Three weeks later at Stanford, the Buffs trailed by nine at the break.
The Buffs went on to lose both games by double figures, so Saturday night they measured major progress at halftime with a single digit. Lappe liked her team’s first-half effort, but added, “We’re not into moral victories; we’re not happy that we were ahead at halftime. We wanted to win the game.”
CU got a three-pointer by Lexy Kresl to open the second half and took a 31-27 lead. But Stanford caught up quickly at 36-36 and just kept going. The Cardinal got a conventional three-point play from Amber Orrange, a Sara James trey and two free throws by Ogwumike to take a 41-36 lead with 13:05 to play.
It was the largest lead of the night by either team and in a bump-and-grind game like this it looked even larger. And it grew.
After two empty Buffs possessions, a pair of baskets by Mikaela Ruef completed a 9-0 run and opened a nine-point (45-36) Stanford lead. With 10:38 remaining, CU needed a timeout, and if the Buffs weren’t fully on the ropes, reaching out to them was no problem.
Stanford took its first double-figure lead (49-38) on a pair of Ogwumike free throws, then she added two more points with a steal and layup with just over nine minutes to play. The Cardinal increased its advantage to as many as 15 in the final three minutes.
“We competed well for a huge portion of the game,” Lappe said. “We stopped defending a little and that’s when they went on their run. We have to learn how to score and step up against good teams when they make a run.”
Jeffery said the first half and the early portion of the second 20 minutes showed the Buffs that, “We’ve got a lot of fight in us, we showed a lot of resilience in that first half. To hold the No. 4 team in the nation to that type of half was good for our team. We know what it takes and we know we have to take that extra step and put a 40-minute game together.”
The 14-point loss, she added, “doesn’t take away from our confidence . . . we’re not down. We just have to regroup for the NCAA Tournament.”
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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.
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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