Posts tagged Jen Reese
Buffs Storm Past Arizona 55-42
Feb 16th
Story by Caryn Maconi, CUBuffs.com
TUCSON, Ariz. – So far this season, the No. 21 Colorado women’s basketball team hasn’t been fazed by road competition. On Friday night at the McKale Center, the Buffaloes showed they can create their own energy wherever they go.
Led by sophomore forward Jen Reese’s 15 points, CU rolled to its fourth consecutive win, 55-42, over the Arizona Wildcats. It was the second meeting this season for the Pac-12 Conference opponents, as the Buffs also defeated the Wildcats 79-36 in Boulder in January.
Sophomore Jen Reese led CU with 15 points
CU improves to 19-5 overall and 8-5 in the conference. Arizona’s loss, meanwhile, was its eighth straight, dropping the Wildcats to 11-13, 3-10.
The Buffs outrebounded their opponents 40-35, grabbing 16 offensive rebounds compared to the Wildcats’ 9. Redshirt freshman forward Arielle Roberson’s picked up a game-high seven rebounds, while Reese and freshman forward Jamee Swan added six each.
In the game’s first five minutes, Arizona forced five turnovers but failed to capitalize offensively, allowing CU to stay even through the 12:42 mark (11-11). CU sophomore guard Jasmine Sborov then put together an “and-1” play which sparked a 14-0 Colorado run to put the Buffs up 25-13.
“We knew we had to take a run, and we just had to keep going,” Reese said. “Our defense goes into our offense, and after a while we got great shots, everyone was finding gaps in either zone or man – so we just kept knocking those down and playing defense.”
Sophomore guard Lexy Kresl’s trey with 4:33 remaining gave CU its largest lead of the first half at 30-15, but the Wildcats responded with an 8-0 run of their own to end the half down only seven (30-23).
Buffs coach Linda Lappe said that with a comfortable lead, her team lost some of its sense of urgency and started to allow the Wildcats uncontested shots.
“You want to make sure that when you have an opponent down, you keep a foot on the gas pedal and keep going,” Lappe said. “I thought there were times when we let up a little bit.”
But as the Buffs turned up the heat out of the locker room, the Wildcats went cold. CU went on a 10-0 run to start the second half, holding Arizona scoreless for more than six minutes.
Arizona senior guard Davellyn Whyte, the team’s leading scorer, put up her first three points of the game and Arizona’s first of the half at the 13:36 mark. While Whyte would score another three to bring the Wildcats to within nine, the gap would never get closer than that.
Colorado ended the game shooting just 37.3 percent from the field, but held Arizona to 32.6 percent. CU also scored 14 points off of turnovers compared to AU’s nine and got 30 points in the paint compared to AU’s 14.
Lappe said her team was prepared specifically to guard Whyte, a player who averages 16.4 points per game to rank fifth in the Pac-12.
“I thought it was a team defensive effort,” Lappe said. “We rotated a lot of different players on her, and I thought it was great to have somebody fresh on her. We know what she can do offensively.”
Junior guard Brittany Wilson opened guarding the standout, but senior guard Chucky Jeffery and junior center Rachel Hargis took turns on her as well.
“Whyte’s a great player,” Reese said. “Stopping her was big – I mean, they had other players kind of stepped up, but our defense won the game for us.”
CU committed 20 turnovers but also had 11 steals, marking the team’s fifth straight game with 10 or more steals.
Still, Lappe said that despite the strong defense, that 20-turnover total was inexcusable for a Top 25 team.
“I told our team we should never have 20 turnovers in February, and that has to become a part of our program’s culture,” Lappe said. “It hasn’t been in the past, we’ve been OK with it in the past, but this year needs to be different.”
CU seeks its fourth conference road win on Sunday at Arizona State (2 p.m. MST).
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CU Women’s B-ball Team Beats Oregon St. Beavers in Annual Pink Game
Feb 9th
Story by Caryn Maconi, CUBuffs.com
University of Colorado senior guard Chucky Jeffery earned her 1,500th career point and 26th career double-double Friday night in a 61-47 win over Oregon State.
It was a long-awaited return to the Coors Events Center for the Buffs, who wrapped up a four-game California swing with a split against UCLA and USC last weekend.
Jeffery was high scorer with 22 points
The CU women wore pink-accented uniforms in honor of the annual “Play 4 Kay” game to support breast cancer awareness.
“It was breast cancer week, and coach talked about attacking because that’s what the women with breast cancer have to do,” said junior guard Brittany Wilson, who grabbed a game-high five steals. “They have to attack, they have to fight. So we came down, we attacked, we came after loose balls, and forced them into those (24) turnovers.”
CU put the heat on the visitors early on, going on a 9-0 run before OSU scored its first basket of the game with 14:09 left in the half.
Wilson said that solid start was crucial for the Buffs, as they were battling a strong defensive team ranked sixth in the nation in blocks at 6.1 per game.
“We knew we had to come out and set a statement or they would keep coming at us,” Wilson said, “and you can’t give a team like that confidence.”
But the Beavers answered back, hitting four three-pointers in five minutes to make it 21-16 with six minutes remaining.
Thanks to a solid 78.6 percent on 14 opportunities from the free throw line, CU was able to hold onto that narrow lead and enter intermission still up five (28-23).
Photo from Missy’s Blog
Freshman Jen Reese had another big night–scoring 10
“Oregon State is a good team, they hustle and they scrap the entire game,” Jeffery said. “They weren’t going away, so we knew we had to go on a run and we had to get it up a little bit … that was huge for us to get this win.”
The second half began in a similar fashion as the first, as the Buffs went on a 7-0 run with five straight points by Jeffery and two made free throws by forward Arielle Roberson.
This time, though, the momentum stuck.
Colorado built its largest lead of the game, 15, with eight minutes left on the clock. From there, the Ducks would not pull closer than eight.
Shooting 7-of-10 free throws to end the game, the Buffs widened the gap back to 14 and closed with a 61-47 victory.
Jeffery led the Buffs in scoring with 22 points, adding 11 rebounds and a season-high three blocks. Sophomore forward Jen Reese also scored in double figures with 10 points, while Roberson added nine.
Guard Jamie Weisner was the biggest force on the court for the Beavers, as the freshman scored 22 total points and added seven rebounds; she was the only OSU player with more than seven points.
“Weisner’s tough,” said Colorado head coach Linda Lappe. “She plays so hard, she’s physical, she never quits. She’s a tough matchup for anybody in the league, so you’ve got to give her a lot of credit. She kept them in the game.”
With the win, CU improves to 17-5 overall, 6-5 in the Pac-12 Conference, while OSU falls to 9-14 and 3-8 in conference play.
Colorado returns to the Coors Events Center Sunday at 1:30 p.m. to take on the University of Oregon. After falling to Utah 67-47 Friday night, the Ducks are ranked last in the Pac-12 with a 1-10 record in the conference.
In fact, the Buffs have just one opponent remaining in the regular season, Washington, that is currently ranked higher in the conference standings.
Wilson, however, said her team won’t get comfortable just yet.
“Being in the Pac-12, you never know what team is going to come out,” Wilson said. “You have to play every team and respect them. This is a bottom-to-top hard conference to play, and if you give a team confidence, they’ll keep shooting and keep coming back at you. You don’t want to relax too much.”
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CU women lose to #7Cal-Berkeley by 3 points
Jan 26th
BERKELEY, Calif.
Winning on the road hasn’t been a problem this season for the Colorado women’s basketball team – until Friday night at Haas Pavilion.
After squandering a 16-point first-half lead, the No. 20/23 Buffs fought back gamely in the second half but came up empty on their final possession and dropped a 59-56 Pac-12 Conference decision to No. 7 California. The loss ended a four-game CU winning streak.
B-Will was high scorer with 13 points
“I’m proud of the way we battled back, but we believed we deserved to win that one,” CU coach Linda Lappe said.
Losing for the first time in five road trips this season, the Buffs dropped to 4-3 in the Pac-12 and 15-3 overall. The Bears improved to 16-2, 6-1 and remained tied with No. 6 Stanford for first place in the Pac-12. CU visits Stanford on Sunday afternoon.
As was the case in their 53-49 win in Boulder earlier this month, the Bears were beasts on the boards Friday night, outrebounding the Buffs 47-39. Included in Cal’s total were 24 offensive boards, which proved to be decisive. CU also committed 19 turnovers, leading to 20 Cal points.
Brittany Wilson led CU with 11 points, while Chucky Jeffery added 10. Cal, which tied the series at five games apiece, was led by Gennifer Brandon and Layshia Clarendon with 13 each. Brandon also had 10 rebounds.
CU’s leading scorer, Arielle Roberson, didn’t score her first points until 11:25 remained in the game. She finished with seven points and two rebounds – all in the second half.
The Buffs took control early, going on a 15-2 run that opened a 14-point lead (24-10) with just over 10 minutes remaining in the first half. During that surge, CU hit four of six three attempts – two of them by Brittany Wilson.
The lead went to 16 as the Buffs outscored the Bears 23-8 over a 10-minute span and went up 32-16 with about 4 minutes left before intermission. And that’s where CU ran into trouble.
By dominating the offensive boards and getting to the free throw line, the Bears stayed within striking distance. They outscored the Buffs 8-0 to close the first half, with a late trey from the left corner by senior guard Eliza Pierre cutting CU’s lead in half and drawing Cal to within 32-24 at the break.
The Buffs were able to fashion their double-figure first half leads without a point from Roberson (13.6 ppg) and with No. 2 scorer Jeffery (13.4 ppg) accounting for only four.
Cal made only eight of its first 35 shots and shot 22.3 percent in the first half. The Bears finished shooting 33.8 from the field while the Buffs shot 38.9 – but only 30 percent in the second half.
CU needed its second-half start to duplicate its first, but that didn’t happen. On the Buffs’ first possession, center Rachel Hargis picked up her third foul on a hard screen that negated a three-pointer by Lexy Kresl.
Cal immediately took advantage, getting a basket by Reshanda Gray and cutting CU’s lead to 32-26. That extended the Bears’ run to 10-0, putting pressure on the Buffs to respond – and fast. Jeffery finally got CU’s first second-half points, but Cal answered with an 8-0 run to tie the score at 34-34 on a jumper by Clarendon with 14:43 to play.
Her basket capped an 18-2 Bears run that spanned the final 4 minutes of the first half and the opening 5 minutes of the second.
But the Buffs didn’t go belly up. A Jeffery turnaround in the lane, followed by a Jen Reese trey opened a five-point CU lead (39-34), but Cal rallied with an 8-2 run and took its first lead (42-41) since 3-2 on a basket by Brittany Boyd, who finished with 10 points and was huge for the Bears down the stretch.
Neither team was able to take more than a two-point advantage until Boyd and Clarendon hit back-to-back jumpers to put Cal up 53-50 with 5:35 left. But CU tied the score at 54-54 on two free throws by Roberson and a Jeffery jumper with 3:42 remaining.
A pair of Boyd layups sent the Bears ahead 58-54 with 2 minutes showing. A Reese jumper in the lane pulled the Buffs to 58-56, giving CU possession with 36 seconds remaining. Roberson’s drive to the basket and layup attempt was blocked by Brandon.
The Bears rebounded and Clarendon was fouled. She hit one of two free throws with 14.8 remaining, putting Cal up 59-56 and leaving CU 10.3 seconds to hit a trey and tie.
But the Buffs had trouble getting a clean shot away, and Brittany Wilson’s desperation attempt from the left corner missed.
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