Posts tagged fast
Ugly Or Not, Buffs Finally Get ‘W’ vs. Wyoming
Nov 14th
Contributing editor
BOULDER – Tad Boyle likes it fast, Larry Shyatt likes it slow. The hare finally took down the tortoise Wednesday night, but it was hardly the hoops version of the Indy 500 and it was anything but picturesque.
Boyle’s Colorado Buffs, perennial losers to Shyatt’s Wyoming Cowboys, encountered nearly night-long difficulty finding offensive consistency. But the Buffs dialed up their defense in the second half, hit their free throws when needed and exited the Coors Events Center with what Boyle labeled a homely 63-58 win.
“If you guys are looking for the definition of the phrase ‘winning ugly’ I think you saw it tonight,” he said afterward. “It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t our best effort, but I was really proud of our guys for finding a way down the stretch to win the game.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for Larry Shyatt, the University of Wyoming and their program. They play us tough every year and it was good to get a win against them. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t pretty but we’ll take it, we’ll learn and we’ll move on and we’ll get better. I’ve said many times you’d rather learn from a win than learn from a loss and I think our players understand that.”
The Cowboys – staunch believers in low-possession, low-scoring games – had defeated the Buffs six straight times. Payback came Wednesday night, but it didn’t come easily for CU, which trailed by 10 points in the first half and got its final seven points on free throws (7-of-12) in the game’s last 3:06. The Buffs hit 24-of-34 free throws for the game to the Cowboys’ 11-of-15.
Junior Spencer Dinwiddie made five of his eight free throw attempts during the final 3:06, finishing with a team-high 15 points. He was 10-of-13 from the free throw line, taking all of his foul shots in the second half, when the Buffs rallied from a 31-26 deficit at intermission largely on their performance on the defensive end.
“We’ve gone 0-3 against (Wyoming) since I’ve been here,” Dinwiddie said. “It was a big game for us. I know I said earlier they aren’t a rival and I stick by that. But at the same time they are a really big game. Really, anything is a big game; we’re glad we won.”
Three other Buffs starters backed up Dinwiddie with double-figure scoring efforts – Askia Booker with 14, Xavier Johnson with 13 and Josh Scott with 12. The Buffs outrebounded the Cowboys 35-24, with Scott grabbing nine boards and Dinwiddie adding seven.
With Wyoming switching defenses and forcing CU to attack a zone and get to the free throw line for the bulk of its offense, the Buffs managed only four assists in 40 minutes. It was CU’s lowest total since having just two in a 1977 game at Jacksonville in a one-point win. CU’s bench was outscored by Wyoming’s 16-3, which Boyle attributed in part to his “shortening” his bench in the second half due to most of his top reserves being freshmen.
CU shot 40 percent (18-of-45) for the game but held Wyoming to 38.1 percent (8-of-21) in the second half – and that, noted Boyle, was key.
“In the second half, the defense was the difference in the game,” he said, adding that his team gave up nine layups in the first half – two more than its goal for the game. “We gave up three layups in the second half . . . when we ran our offense and executed our offense, we shot 50 percent in the second half and those are good numbers.”
Guard Josh Adams, of Parker, Colo., led Wyoming with 15 points, followed by Larry Nance Jr. with 10. Adams said the Buffs’ ability to reach the free throw line “always makes it difficult. They have a lot of great athletes, a lot of quick kids and a lot of kids with size. They were able to get to the line more than us . . . if you get yourself to the line like that in a game you give yourself a chance to win.”
Said Shyatt: “We just didn’t come up with what we needed at the charity stripe.”
The Cowboys led 31-26 at halftime, but that was half the advantage they held 31/2 minutes earlier. A 10-0 run put them up 28-18 before the Buffs began to gather themselves. It didn’t help that CU went just over 71/2 minutes without a field goal, and that Dinwiddie was limited to 12 first-half minutes after drawing two fouls.
Wyoming’s 10-0 run featured three-pointers by Jerron Granberry and Adams and underscored a deficiency CU exhibited in its opener. UT-Martin had hit 41 percent from beyond the arc in a 91-65 loss, but the Buffs’ perimeter ‘D’ problems got Boyle’s attention.
The Cowboys ended the half shooting 50 percent from downtown (5-of-10), but hit only two of their 11 second-half attempts (18.2 percent). “We tried to get a little closer to them,” Boyle said. “I thought our three-point defense in the second half was much better.”
The Buffs needed a stellar start to the second 20 minutes and they got it, outscoring the Cowboys 8-3 and tying the score 34-34 on a pair of “XJ” free throws with 17:17 remaining. CU went inside to open the half, getting baskets from Scott and a pair of layups from Wes Gordon that preceded Johnson’s free throws.
Wyoming reclaimed a four-point lead (40-36), but CU used free throws by Dinwiddie and Booker to tie the score at 40-40 before a Booker layup put the Buffs ahead 42-40 with 12:15 to play. The Cowboys led only once the rest of the game – 47-46 on a three-pointer by Nathan Sobey with 7:55 left.
But even with CU parading to the foul line, Wyoming stayed close. The Cowboys closed to 57-56 on a jumper by Nance with 1:47 remaining. Dinwiddie answered by making four consecutive free throws, Xavier Talton hit one of two – the last gave the Buffs a four-point lead with 11.7 seconds showing – and Johnson made one of two with 3.6 seconds left to end the scoring.
Boyle said Dinwiddie “can affect the game the game in a lot of different ways. It doesn’t have to be scoring; it doesn’t have to be shooting. It can be getting to the free throw line, which he obviously does a great job of. It can be defensively and I think he’s our best perimeter defender right now.”
If the Buffs did as Boyle suggested and won ugly, Scott took consolation in this: “You can see that we make mistakes and sometimes lose concentration, but one of the blessings is that we have so much we can improve upon. We play teams that are well-coached and have returning players . . . we have to feel pretty excited by the fact we were able to beat a team like that. It just shows that we have promise for the games coming up.”
The next one is one of the earliest in recent memory: The Buffs are back at the CEC on Saturday at 10 a.m. against Jackson State.
7 CU engineering students among the Big Brains
Nov 13th
among 20 national engineering leaders
Seven University of Colorado Boulder aerospace engineering students are among 20 top students who will be recognized Nov. 14 with a new national award honoring tomorrow’s engineering leaders sponsored by Penton’s Aviation Week in partnership with Raytheon.
The “Twenty20s” awards honor the academic achievements and leadership of top engineering, math, science and technology students.
The CU-Boulder award winners are doctoral candidates Paul Anderson, Brad Cheetham, Jake Gamsky, Erin Griggs and Dan Lubey, and B.S./M.S. students Kirstyn Johnson and Mike Lotto. The awards will be presented during Aviation Week’s annual Aerospace & Defense Programs Conference in Phoenix.
“I am delighted with the national recognition our outstanding aerospace undergraduate and graduate students are receiving from Aviation Week,” said Penina Axelrad, chair of CU-Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “All of them bring incredible passion and impressive technical skills to their classwork and to an extensive portfolio of professional and extracurricular activities. Each is on a fast track to making remarkable contributions in fields like space exploration and satellite-based Earth observations.”
The high-profile projects and research portfolios of the seven students cover a wide range of critical issues facing the field of aerospace engineering today.
Working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration, Cheetham has been developing and co-teaching graduate-level courses on commercial spaceflight, while Gamsky is helping to design the Dream Chaser commercial spacecraft as an intern at Sierra Nevada Corp. and conducting research on human spaceflight life-support technology.
Griggs is developing a next-generation Global Positioning System receiver for spacecraft. Anderson is working to model geostationary space debris and Lubey is studying space situational awareness to detect and model satellite maneuvers.
In their senior year of the undergraduate portion of their concurrent B.S./M.S. degrees, Lotto and Johnson both hold perfect 4.0 grade-point averages and have completed internship or co-op experiences with NASA. They are working together as part of a capstone senior project design team that is developing a dust impact monitor capable of measuring the size of tiny cosmic dust particles near the surface of the sun.
In addition to their outstanding academic achievements, the students were selected for their leadership and civic involvement outside of the classroom. All are active in professional and student societies and volunteer their time to help others. From encouraging K-12 outreach to volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to mentoring and tutoring fellow classmates, the seven students all make service a priority.
“For most of us this is more than a career, it’s a passion,” said Cheetham, who three years ago launched the “We Want Our Future” educational initiative to inspire American youth and strengthen their interest in math and science.
Anderson, who mentors undergraduates and participates in outreach to younger students, agreed. “We’re fostering the next generation of engineers here,” he said. “We want to inspire them to continue the great things we’re doing in aerospace.”
Six of the seven students will attend the awards ceremony in Phoenix along with former NASA astronaut and aerospace engineering sciences faculty member Joe Tanner.
Tanner and Axelrad said the Twenty20s winners are representative of the high caliber of many of the students in CU-Boulder’s aerospace program, which is considered one of the best in the nation.
“Our department is proud to count these seven among our students and we look forward to watching their careers take flight,” says Axelrad. “We will continue to create opportunities for students like these to learn from our exceptional faculty, collaborate in hands-on projects with talented peers and industry partners, and engage in cutting-edge aerospace research.”
For more information on CU-Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences visit http://www.colorado.edu/aerospace/.
-CU-
Buffs’ b-ball: Young guns show up BIG at home opener
Nov 11th
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – Tad Boyle might be a long way from settling on an eight- or nine-player rotation for his Colorado men’s basketball team, but this much is settled: Freshmen will figure prominently in any plan he devises.
That became apparent Sunday afternoon at the Coors Events Center in CU’s 91-65 home-opening romp over overmatched UT-Martin. Boyle’s quartet of first-year scholarship players – Dustin Thomas, Jaron Hopkins, Tre’Shaun Fletcher and George King – and redshirt freshman Wesley Gordon made key contributions as the Buffs shook any residue from a 72-60 loss two nights earlier to No. 25 Baylor.
“I’m still getting used to the rotations,” Boyle said. “I’m not sure we have the rotations yet that we’re going to have as the year goes on. But I really like our guys . . . I thought our freshmen really grew tonight and gave us good minutes. It’s hard again with the rotations; I’d like to not have three or four (freshmen) on the floor at once, but sometimes there’s nothing I can do about that.”
And there are times – at least in early November – when it seems like a good idea, provided they contribute as they didSunday. Four of the Buffs’ first-year players combined for 36 points, with Gordon leading that pack with 13 and eight rebounds. He debuted against Baylor with nine points and eight boards.
“I’m pleased with the way he played against Baylor (and) the way he played tonight,” Boyle said. “If Wesley defends and rebounds like he did tonight he’s going to help this team.”
Thomas and Hopkins scored nine points each, with Hopkins contributing three – tying him for team high – of the Buffs’ 19 assists. Fletcher added five points and while King didn’t score, he grabbed three rebounds and made one assist in his 5 minutes of court time.
“We got a lot of guys in the rotation and I thought that was good,” Boyle said. “We’re awfully young, as I’ve been telling you guys, and I think it showed at times.”
CU didn’t begin pulling away from UTM, a first-time foe from the Ohio Valley Conference, until sophomore Xavier Johnson hit a three-pointer from the left wing to tie the score at 24-24 with 8:21 left in the first half. That trey ignited a 12-0 Buffs run that eventually went to 19-3 and resulted in a 40-27 advantage – CU’s largest of the first half.
The 6-7 Thomas, who appears to be proving his versatility nightly, and the 6-9 Gordon were instrumental as the Buffs pulled away. Thomas had five points and Gordon four in the 19-3 surge, and Fletcher capped the run with a three-pointer.
“I think the freshmen did a good job of coming in and not being timid toward the game,” Thomas said. “We played good and played with confidence.”
By intermission, the Buffs led by 10 (45-35) – courtesy of that big run. But CU had to overcome the early hot shooting of UTM’s Terence Smith, who scored 10 of his team’s first 14 points and helped the Skyhawks go ahead 14-8 – their largest lead of the game.
“I think we came out a little slow,” Gordon said. “But the game went on and we picked it up a little bit. Our energy is something we need to keep the entire game. We have to come out from the first tip with high energy.”
UTM shot 41.4 percent from behind the arc, hitting 12 of its 29 trey attempts and underscoring one of two main deficiencies Boyle observed. “We didn’t guard the three line,” he said, “and we turned it over 18 times . . . we had six (turnovers) against a top 25 team on Friday night.”
Boyle knew his team’s advantage Sunday was inside, “And anytime you have that you want to exploit it as best you can,” he said. The Buffs did, outscoring the Skyhawks 44-10 in the paint and outrebounding them 46-26. The most fault Boyle found with his team’s interior work was a nine-possession stretch that produced “only two paint touches. That can’t be. It’s got to be eight out of nine – not two out of nine.”
Still, CU’s post players had their moments. In addition to the 6-9 Gordon’s 13 points, 6-10 Josh Scott scored a team-high 15 and collected eight rebounds.
“In our league we’re not used to seeing guys that are 6-10 or 6-11,” said UTM coach Jason James. “We see guys that are 6-6 and 6-7. When you get those guys that are 6-10 and can play, I think it’s an issue.”
CU junior guard Spencer Dinwiddie added 13 points, hitting just two field goals in three attempts but going 9-of-10 from the free throw line. Johnson’s 12 points rounded out the four Buffs in double figures.
CU pulled ahead by 14 points twice in the first 4 minutes of the second half, the first time on a three-point play by Johnson (50-36) and the second time on a pair of “XJ” free throws (54-40).
But those double-digit leads disappeared after UTM three-pointers on three successive possessions. Marshun Newell hit the first, Dee Oldham the next two, cutting CU advantage to seven points (56-49) with just over 13 minutes remaining.
If the Buffs felt threatened, they didn’t show it. A pair of free throws by Scott and a fast-break layup by Hopkins restored CU’s double-digit lead (60-49) and that score held until Dinwiddie hit one of two free throws with 9:14 to play and converted his second miss into a layup to put the Buffs up again by 14 (63-49). They pushed ahead by as many as 27 points in the final 3 minutes.
The Buffs have given Boyle no reason to doubt their desire. “The fight in our team and our competitiveness is there,” he said. “I don’t worry about that with our guys.”
CU hosts Wyoming on Wednesday night (7 p.m.), the second of a six-game homestand. The Cowboys defeated the Skyhawks 78-60 on Friday night in Laramie, and Boyle reminded that “there’s not one player in our locker room, not one coach who’s beaten Wyoming.”
The Cowboys have defeated the Buffs in each of the past two seasons, winning 65-54 in Boulder and 76-69 in Laramie.
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