Posts tagged Friday
Buffs’ Balance Kicks In Strong For Sweep Of Utes
Jan 14th
Story by Caryn Maconi, CUBuffs.com
SALT LAKE CITY – The No. 23 Colorado women’s basketball team showed itself as a balanced group of road warriors Sunday in a 56-43 Pac-12 Conference win over Utah.
CU’s victory was the second over the Utes in five days and kept the Buffaloes unbeaten (4-0) on the road this season. CU improved to 13-2 overall and 2-2 in the Pac-12, while Utah slipped to 9-6 overall and remains winless in conference (0-4).
Jen Reese was high scorer for the Buffs with 11 points
The Buffs and Utes competed in unusual back-to-back games, with CU winning 67-57 on Tuesday at the Coors Events Center. In that game, Buffs guard Chucky Jeffery was the dominant force offensively with a season-high 28 points.
On Sunday, though, Jeffery took the opposite approach, taking a step back while her teammates — nearly all of them — stepped up.
Initially, Jeffery’s withdrawal was forced as she went to the bench with two fouls and 8:58 remaining in the half — but not without hitting her 1,400th career point on an “and-one” play early in the game.
Without the senior standout, the Buffs were forced to spread out their scoring and dip into a balanced bench to keep up the momentum. Jeffery’s teammates handled the pressure well, shooting just 44 percent from the field but holding Utah to 31 percent.
Freshman Kyeesha Weston (right) had her best game of the season scoring 8 poinst
“We’re better when we’re balanced, I really feel that,” CU coach Linda Lappe said. “I thought everybody that came in . . . really just kept the flow going. You could never see at any point when we subbed that it affected anything, and I think that’s what you want when you sub. I felt like any of the combinations that we put in contributed a lot, and we’re just really solid.”
Although Jeffery came back in for a couple minutes midway through the first half to restore order after a 7-2 Utah run, she never had to carry the load on offense. The Buffs leading scorer wound up with only six points, but she recorded six assists, three steals and five rebounds – three areas in which she has led the team throughout the season.
By the end of the first half, seven CU players had scored, including freshmen Jamee Swan and Kyleesha Weston and sophomore Jen Reese off the bench.
Meanwhile, forwards Taryn Wicijowski and Michelle Plouffe carried much of the load for the Utes, earning 16 of Utah’s 23 first-half points between them.
Neither team had more than a five-point lead at any point in the half, but CU managed a two-point advantage (25-23) at intermission.
Jeffery started the second half, but the Buffs’ depth continued to show. A 10-4 Buffs run capped by a Jasmine Sborov three gave them an eight-point lead with 14:47 on the clock. Plouffe then hit a three to close the gap to five, but Reese responded with a 7-0 run of her own, putting CU up 42-30 with 11:46 remaining.
The Buffs never relinquished the lead from there. Redshirt freshman Arielle Roberson, sophomore Lexy Kresl and junior Rachel Hargis picked up the effort on defense to hold Plouffe and Wicijowski to a combined eight points in the time remaining. Guard Iwalani Rodrigues, another key offensive threat for the Utes, scored just three on the night.
“What we told our team is, it’s not going to be three players that guard their best three players (Plouffe, Wicijowski and Rodrigues),” Lappe said. “It’s going to be a total team effort in terms of defense . . . everybody who was on kind of a non-scorer did a fantastic job of really making their lives miserable and making them work for everything that they got.”
By game’s end, the Buffs were up by 13 (56-43), and Reese had racked up 11 points off the bench to lead the Buffs in scoring. Roberson also hit double figures for the 14th time this season with 10, while Weston added eight.
In total, nine CU players contributed points, with Kresl and Sborov contributing three each in the second half.
Colorado outrebounded Utah 41-32, led by Hargis’ seven, and shot 44 percent from the field compared to Utah’s 26.3.
Wicijowski led the Utes in scoring with 16, getting her 1,200th career point early in the first half. Plouffe added 15; no other Utah player scored more than three.
Road games are a new strength for the Buffs as they earned a winning road record (9-8) last season for the first time since 2003-04. The reason, said Reese, is that under Lappe’s leadership, CU has found a way to keep the momentum going away from Coors.
“On road games, we have to make our own energy, and that really helps our energy level going into the game,” Reese said. “(Coach Lappe) says, ‘Slow and steady wins the race,’ and I just feel like (road games) show our toughness.”
The Buffs return to Boulder this week to take on Arizona State on Friday at 7 p.m. and Arizona on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the CEC.
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Bomb threat, “Hit List” closes Niwot High
Jan 11th
from the Longmont Times-Call via Huffington Post
Niwot High School in Boulder, Colo. is closed Friday as authorities investigate a threat to blow up the school and a 30-name “hit list.”
A threat that the school would “blow on the 11th” was found scrawled on a bathroom Monday and made public Tuesday. Officials decided to close the school when the threat escalated upon Thursday’s discovery of the threatening hit list filled with students’ names, The Longmont Times-Call reports.
Parents were notified of the decision and investigation in a letter Thursday. Deputies are using dogs to comb the school for bombs, and the school is offering a $1,000 reward for anyone with information about the perpetrator.
“We made a recommendation to the school district that they don’t have school on Friday for safety reasons, for the students,” Cmdr. Rick Brough of the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office told KUSA-TV. “It gives us more time to do an investigation and see if we can identify who is responsible, and whether the threat is credible.”
Schools across the country are still on high alert as parents nervously sent their children back to class after the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook school shooting. Districts nationwide have tightened security measures and increased campus patrols, and hypersensitivity to any unusual activity or perceived threats have already resulted in numerous lockdowns.
“Ten years ago this wouldn’t have been a problem, and now it’s a real problem. And my child’s name is on the list, and it’s very concerning,” parent Ellen Ross told TheDenverChannel. “I just really hope that the parents talk to their kids and try to find out what is going on because some child knows. No child does this and doesn’t tell anybody. I really want the parents to talk to their kids and find out who’s doing this.”
Weekend activities, including a girls’ basketball game and wrestling tournament, have also been canceled, KDVR reports.
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No. 20 CU women’s b-ball team starts slow, falls to No. 4 Cardinal
Jan 5th
Story by B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor, CUBuffs.com
BOULDER – The Stanford women’s basketball team suffered a humbling home loss last weekend and that’s where the Cardinal left that unpleasant experience – at home.
The Stanford team that showed up Friday night at the Coors Events Center was crisp, focused and physical – and too much for slow-starting Colorado.
The No. 20 Buffaloes played the No. 20 Cardinal even (26-26) in the second half, but, oh, that forgettable first half . . . In the Pac-12 Conference opener for both teams, Stanford opened strong and stayed in control, downing CU 57-40 and stopping the Buffs’ winning streak at 12.
Jasmine Sborov played a good defensive game for Colorado Friday night
CU (12-1, 0-1) doesn’t have time to dwell on its first loss; No. 7 California visits the CED on Sunday at noon. “It will show a lot about the character of our team – who we are, what we’re about,” Buffs coach Linda Lappe said. “We’re going to keep this game in perspective . . . it only hurts you if you let it. There were a lot of positives.”
Stanford (12-1, 1-0) ) has won or shared the league championship in every season this decade, has posted 79 consecutive conference wins (regular season/conference tournament) and has made Final Four appearances in each of the past five seasons.
And the Cardinal, bolting to a 15-point lead almost before the Buffs could blink, offered hints Friday night that success of that sort might be on the way again.
Junior forward Chiney Ogwumike led Stanford with a game-high 20 points and 11 rebounds. Senior guard Chucky Jeffery scored 17 for CU and redshirt freshman Arielle Roberson, who had been in double figures for all 12 games and entered Friday night as CU’s leading scorer (15.7), finally reached double digits (10) on a jump shot with 49.1 seconds to play.
CU was hoping to get a jump on the Cardinal and get the CEC crowd (5,888) involved – but it didn’t work out that way. Stanford, coming off its first loss of the season last weekend (61-35 at home to Connecticut), got a grip on CU and didn’t let go.
Senior Joslyn Tinkle opened the scoring with a three-pointer as the shot clock wound down, sophomore Amber Orrange followed with a layup, and the Cardinal was in high gear. CU, meanwhile, was struggling to find first.
It took the Buffs nearly 4 minutes to get on the scoreboard – Rachel Hargis got the first basket at 16:15 – then another 6:11 to score again. At the 11:37 mark, Stanford was up 15-2 and CU was 1-for-15 from the field (6.7 percent) and had suffered six blocked shots.
Hargis finally got someone to accompany her in the scoring column when Jeffery hit a jumper from just left of the free throw line with 10:04 left before intermission. She finished with eight first-half points but got little help; in addition to Hargis, Roberson and Jen Reese were the only other Buffs to score. Each had two first-half points, and Roberson’s basket didn’t come until 1:24 remained before intermission.
For most of the first half’s final 12 minutes, Stanford held a 15-point lead, then increased it to 17 (31-14) in the last minute. CU’s 14 first-half points were the fewest ever at home and tied for the third-fewest ever.
The Cardinal scored the second half’s first four points and increased its lead to 21 (35-14) before the Buffs got a conventional three-point play from Roberson to open their second-half scoring. But CU still had a mountain to climb and the time to do it was dwindling.
The Buffs pulled to within 15 (37-22) on a steal and layup by Jasmine Sborov with 14:10 remaining, but the Cardinal answered with two free throws by Ogwumike and a layup by Orrange for a 19-point (41-22) advantage.
The 15-point deficit on Sborov’s layup was the closest CU could come until Jeffery converted a traditional three-point play with 3:30 remaining to pull the Buffs within 12 (49-37). But they got no closer than that.
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