Posts tagged colorado
CU vs USC: The “Wilson Show” was not enough
Jan 4th
USC blocked 10 shots and held Colorado to just 28 percent shooting in holding the Buffs to their season low in points in handing CU its second loss in its last three games, both on the road. It was just CU’s second loss to an unranked team in the last 36 games over the past two seasons.
Colorado overcame a horrific start in which it missed its first dozen shots and 16 of its first 17 to rally from 12 point first-half deficit to take small leads in the second half. The game’s first time came early after intermission, as buckets by Lexy Kresl and Jen Reese knotted the score at 24; a soon after 10-4 run gave Colorado its big lead of the night at 34-30 with 14:06 to play.
But the Buffs would endure nearly a six-and-a-half minute stretch without a field goal, though USC could only muster a 7-1 advantage in that window to take a 37-35 edge with 8:57 left. CU then countered with a 10-5 run to go up 45-42 with 4:01 remaining.
For CU, it was basically the “Wilson Show,” as the twins, senior guards Ashley and Brittany from nearby Long Beach Poly High School, played the first of their last two games in their home area and combined to score 25 of Colorado’s points. Brittany scored CU’s last field goal at the 4:54 mark and finished with 13 points, while Ashley converted two free throws for the last Colorado points with 4:01 on the clock to end with 12.
Cassie Harberts led the Trojans with 19 points, seven coming down the stretch. She made two free throws that put the Trojans ahead for good, 46-45, with 3:08 remaining, and grabbed an offensive rebound and converted a layup for a 48-45 lead with 2:20 to go.
Brianna Barrett’s layup in traffic with 48 seconds left made it a two-score game at 50-45, and 15 seconds later, Harberts sunk another pair of free throws to all but seal the win for USC. Colorado came up empty on its last eight possessions.
Colorado (10-2, 0-1 Pac-12) had trouble on offense in its conference opener for a second straight year, having fallen to Stanford, 57-40, at home last January 4.
Southern California (9-5, 2-0), which opened the week and Pac-12 play with a 56-54 win at rival UCLA on Monday, snapped a 16-game losing streak against ranked teams. Unfortunately, only a sparse crowd of 372 was on hand to witness the defensive battle and USC’s first win over a ranked school since beating No. 24 Gonzaga in December 2011.
“We’ll learn from this, and we’ll be fine,” CU coach Linda Lappe said. “We have a great group of seniors that provides us with great leadership. This was one of those games where we just didn’t play well in numerous spurts, especially the last eight to 10 minutes.”
“The problem was we were out rebounded, they made great stops, and we either fouled or did not make plays,” she continued. “We were tentative, not moving into the right spots on our drives.
“Most of (USC’s) games are won on defense. We became stagnant, and they brought all their players on drives. We had no kick-outs, they’re big and long and blocked plenty of shots inside.”
“It’s time for us to regroup,” Brittany Wilson said. “It was great to play in front of friends and family, but I also do that in Colorado and they give me support as well.”
Colorado didn’t get on the board until there was 13:23 remaining in the first half, when Brittany Wilson’s floater from the lane got a friendly bounce and dropped through. The Buffs missed their first 12 shots before that one fell, but trailed only 9-2 at that point; USC was just 1-of-5 from the field with four turnovers and built the lead converting all six of its early free throw attempts. The Trojans also blocked five of CU’s first dozen field goal tries.
USC built the lead up to 12 on two occasions, the last following a Cassie Harbert layup to make it 17-5 with 9:05 left in the half. Those were CU’s largest deficits of the season, as previously the Buffaloes had yet to trail in double figures, trailing the most at Wyoming when the Cowgirls led at nine at one point.
It was then the Trojan’s turn to get cold; USC failed to score on its next 12 possessions, missing 11 field goals and turning it over three times, and Colorado used the 6:23 scoring drought to climb back into the game. The Buffs reeled off the next 10 points to pull to within 17-15, with Ashley Wilson scoring five of the points in the run.
CU would close the half on a 15-8 spree overall to cut the USC lead to 23-20 at intermission. While CU opened just 1-of-17 from the floor, it made six of its last 16 shots, while the Trojans weren’t clicking any better, finishing the half 7-of-27. Ashley Wilson had seven of CU’s points for the half, topping her season average of 6.1 coming into the game in just the first 20 minutes.
Colorado remains in the Los Angeles area to face UCLA Sunday in an 8:30 p.m. MST tipoff; the game will be televised nationally on the Pac-12 Networks.
Lappe already knows what CU needs to do ahead of that game.
“We’ll work on our overall toughness and rebounding, we need to pass it more efficiently to our scorers,” she said. “Our passes tonight were often low or high and not very crisp. You can’t score 45 on the road and expect to win. We have to make more free throws (CU was 9-of-16) and it’s tough playing from behind almost the entire game.”
Space flight to test antibiotic’s effectiveness
Jan 3rd
education project on ants to space station
NASA Television will provide live coverage of the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s commercial Cygnus spacecraft on Tuesday, Jan. 7 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which will be carrying two University of Colorado Boulder payloads to the International Space Station.
The two CU-Boulder payloads — a biomedical antibiotic experiment and an educational K-12 experiment involving ant behavior in microgravity — are slated to be launched aboard Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Antares rocket at 11:55 a.m. MST. Both experiments were designed by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA-funded center in CU-Boulder’s aerospace engineering sciences department.
The CU-Boulder biomedical experiment was designed to test the effectiveness of antibiotics in space. Past experiments by CU-Boulder and other institutions have shown bacterial susceptibility to antibiotics is significantly reduced during spaceflight, although the reason is not yet known, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor David Klaus, principal investigator on the project.
Klaus said the investigation will examine changes in the gene expression of the bacteria E. coli during exposure to different concentrations of antibiotics while in the microgravity environment of space. The hope is to locate particular genes that are key to resisting antibiotics, which could lead to improved testing on Earth as well as new drug targets or new approaches to understanding antibiotic resistance in certain diseases or infections, said Klaus.
“Previous studies carried out in microgravity have shown that bacteria are able to grow in what normally would be an inhibitory concentration of the antibiotic,” said Klaus. “This investigation is aimed at characterizing the genetic basis for this response in the weightless environment of space with the intent of applying any insight gained toward combating the increasing emergence of drug-resistant pathogens here on Earth.”
Co-investigators on the project include BioServe Director Louis Stodieck, a research professor in aerospace engineering, and Shawn Levy, a researcher at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Ala. The research effort also involves CU-Boulder doctoral candidate Luis Zea.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics kills 100,000 Americans every year and represents a roughly $20 billion expense to the U.S. government in excess health care costs, said Klaus. The experiments will be undertaken using spaceflight test tubes contained in the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, or CGBA, an automated, suitcase-sized incubator, all designed and built by BioServe.
The second experiment launching to ISS is known as Ants in Space, which examines foraging patterns based on the density of the common Pavement Ant, said BioServe Business Development Manager and Education Program Director Stefanie Countryman. “Past experiments by Professor Deborah Gordon, principal investigator on this project, have shown that some ant species have the ability to search areas collectively without individual communication. When ant densities are high, each ant thoroughly searches one small area in a circular, “random” walk, she said. When ant densities are low, each ant searches by walking in a relatively straight line, allowing it to cover more ground.
“Ants assess their own density at the rate at which they meet,” said Countryman, who said the eight individual ant habitats on ISS will be loaded with roughly 100 ants each. “The experiment examines whether in microgravity ants will use the rate at which they meet to assess density, and so use straighter paths in the larger habitat areas. The results will be compared to ground controls, which in this case will include ant habitats in hundreds of K-12 classrooms around the world.”
Countryman has previously directed BioServe K-12 education experiments involving the behavior of butterflies, ladybugs and spiders in space, reaching hundreds of thousands of students around the world in the past two decades. For the ant experiments, BioServe is partnering with the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Education Outreach, a longstanding BioServe partner that has developed the education curriculum guide for the experiment.
BioServe research partners on the ant project include Gordon of Stanford University and Associate Professor Michael Greene of the University of Colorado Denver. The experiment is sponsored by NASA’s National Lab Education Office as well as the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, a nonprofit group headquartered in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Teachers interested in participating in the ant experiments may contact Countryman at countrym@colorado.edu. More information on the project for teachers and students will be online beginning in mid-January at http://www.bioedonline.org.
The flight will be the first Cygnus resupply cargo mission launched to ISS by Orbital Sciences Corp. and follows the earlier, successful launch of a Cygnus demo flight to ISS that arrived at the orbiting station Oct. 22.
In the past 25 years, BioServe has designed, built and flown microgravity life science research experiments on more than 40 space missions. BioServe has a full suite of space flight hardware, both on ISS and on the ground, which supports its own research as well as research conducted by its customers and partners. Past BioServe partners include large and small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities and NASA-funded researchers.
For more information on BioServe visit http://www.colorado.edu/engineering/BioServe/index.html.
-CU-
The Best Places to Ski in Colorado TV Special 2016 is in Production
Dec 26th
Our Best Places to Ski & Snowboard TV Special Begins December 22nd Ends April 15th, hosted by Jann Scott all over Colorado, the USA and the World. Including Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins. On Cable 22Boom in Boulder county 24x week. On C1N.TV 1 24/7. We come to your resort or business and shoot a 3 minute TV segment and play it all over the world.
Check out all of what you can get in our Show Price Listing Here.
To Advertise in this show contact:
Amanda Mooney: (720) 636-5551