Posts tagged MST
Broncos John Elway talks about the upcoming playoff game against the Ravens
Jan 11th
The Broncos finished the season on an 11-game winning streak for a 13-3 record and the No. 1 seed in the AFC going into the playoffs. It was a year that ranked among the best regular seasons in franchise history, but those accomplishments will mean little if they are not followed by a strong postseason run. The players’ incentive for all their hard work throughout the year boils down to what happens over the next few weeks.
“Playoff football is exciting, that’s what you play for,” Elway said. “That’s what you start working out in March for and go through training camp to get in the position that we are right now.”
One of the biggest factors in the team’s success has been quarterback Peyton Manning’s record-setting regular season. With that portion of the year complete, Elway said that looking back, he’s been thrilled to see Manning perform so well after missing 2011 due to injury.
“No. 1, I’m happy for Peyton Manning, with the career that he’s had in the NFL and what he’s done for this game, for him to be able to bounce back like he has, I’m happy for him that he’s reached the level that he has again,” Elway said. “He’s pretty close to the Peyton of old. No. 2, I’m thrilled for us, the Broncos, the fact that he’s playing that well because we’re back in that No. 1 seed, back as one of the elite teams in this league. We’re able to go out and start the playoffs this week and compete for a Super Bowl championship. That’s why we play the game and why we work at this game.”
Denver is set for a rematch with the Ravens Saturday at 2:30 p.m. MST at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. In the first meeting of the season between the teams, the Broncos led 31-3 entering the fourth quarter and defeated Baltimore by a final score of 34-17. A key difference going into Saturday’s game is the health of the Ravens defense, which has welcomed back a trio of key contributors who were injured and inactive in Week 15.
“They’re a lot healthier now than they were when we played them,” Elway said. “(Linebacker) Ray Lewis was down, (Dannell) Ellerbe, their other inside linebacker, was down. So they were really banged up the last time we played them. They’re going to be at full strength, or close to full strength, this time.”
The return of those players has made one of Baltimore’s strengths throughout the season – the team’s red-zone defense – even more formidable. The Ravens’ playoff-opening win over Indianapolis in the Wild Card Round was highlighted by a bend-but-don’t-break defensive effort that yielded 25 first downs and 419 yards of total offense but only nine points.
“One thing that they are, and you noticed it last week also, was the fact that down in the red zone, they’re as good as anybody in the league,” Elway said. “I think they’re top 5, if not the best red-zone defense in the league. Last week they gave up three field goals to Indianapolis even though Indianapolis had the ball for 37 minutes. That’s why it’s going to be important for us to not only be good between the 20s, but when you get down in the red zone, we have to get it into the end zone.”
Another significant difference between Saturday’s game and the Week 15 matchup in Baltimore is the venue. Denver will have the advantage of playing in front of a home crowd that helped the Broncos win seven of their eight home games during the regular season.
“It will be great that we’re playing at Sports Authority Field at Mile High with the fans behind us,” Elway said. “It will bring back that great playoff atmosphere, which is great for the fans. We’ve played better at home. We did a better job this year, we’re 7-1 at home. We’re comfortable there and the fans have been great the whole year. But this is a different atmosphere and they’re going to be a big part of it, especially when (the Ravens are) on offense.”
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Dinwiddie Shows No Brotherly Love In CU Win
Dec 6th
By B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor, CUBuffs.com
BOULDER – Colorado men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle and sophomore guard Spencer Dinwiddie are due for a conversation on in-state basketball etiquette, specifically what not to say before a rivalry game.
But their talk can wait – at least for a year.
After he had scored a career-high 29 points on Wednesday night in leading CU to a grind-it-out 70-61 victory against archrival Colorado State, Dinwiddie said his “little brother” analogy of CSU was, ah, misinterpreted.
“I think they took it as disrespect; I didn’t mean it in a disrespectful way,” a grinning Dinwiddie said. “I have a lot of respect for their team . . . but being able to back up the comment with a win is great; they were on my Twitter a lot.”
He was on the Rams just as fiercely as the Buffs started strong, finished stronger and finally put away the visitors before a record crowd of 11,708 at the Coors Events Center.
“What an atmosphere for college basketball,” Boyle said. “It’s a testament to our fans and how they’ve stepped up and supported us.”
The Buffs got better than average road support last weekend at Wyoming, but their effort wasn’t in synch with their backing. The Cowboys won 76-69, and aside from his team’s first loss, Boyle said “the most disappointing thing was all the people who went up there and we let them down . . . we told our guys that we’re representing more than just ourselves.”
That message, as well as one forcibly delivered in Monday’s smash-mouth practice, surfaced in what Boyle likened to “an NCAA-type game” against CU’s rival from up the road.
In dealing CSU (6-1) its first defeat, CU (7-1) went up by 20 points at halftime, but saw that lead dwindle to three (54-51) in the final 6:45 after a 19-5 Rams run. But a 5-0 Buffs spurt and a recommitment to defense kept the Rams at bay; from the 6:45 mark to the final buzzer, CSU hit only one of its last shots (and that was a trey at the buzzer) and never pulled closer than seven points the rest of the way.
Dinwiddie was 8-of-10 from the field (5-of-7 from beyond the arc) and had an “all-Pac-12 kind of game,” said Boyle. Dinwiddie said he was “just hitting my shots . . . it was more about us playing defense.”
As for Dinwiddie’s idle Tuesday chatter about CSU, Boyle laughed and said, “I’ve got to talk to Spencer about that (but) he backed it up . . . we have to be a little smarter. He just believes in himself and his teammates.”
Junior forward Andre Roberson was the only other CU player in double figures. He picked up his fourth consecutive double-double and the 29th of his career, getting 15 points and 14 rebounds.
CSU got 19 points and 14 rebounds from Colton Iverson and 18 points from Dorian Green. The 6-10, 260-pound Iverson might have been Boyle’s biggest nightmare in the run-up to the Rams, but Boyle wisely rotated 6-10 freshman Josh Scott and 6-11 junior Shane Harris-Tunks on Iverson and made him toil for his totals.
Of Scott, Boyle said, “He grew up tonight as a post defender . . . he was totally different from the Wyoming game.” And Roberson said Harris-Tunks “did a great job of being physical against him.”
The Buffs wanted a solid start – and they might have exceeded their expectations. Before the Rams could blink a couple of times, they trailed 9-0.
Roberson opened the scoring by hitting a soft foul-line jumper (2-0), then followed with an angry stuff after a steal/lob pass by Dinwiddie (4-0). If you thought things were going CU’s way, a banked-in trey by Askia Booker – his only points of the first half – made it 7-0. Then a sweet spin by Sabatino Chen sent the Buffs up 9-0.
And this was their warm-up act.
When CSU blinked again, CU had strung together a 20-5 run and was up 20 (35-15). Before the half was over, the Buffs would lead by 25 (42-17). Dinwiddie jump-started and finished that push, burying three three-pointers and hitting a pair of free throws following a technical foul called on Iverson with 5:18 before halftime.
After the weekend loss at Wyoming, Boyle had challenged his team to be tougher defensively and to rebound with authority. The Rams – the NCAA’s rebound margin leader at plus-17.3 – had a 42-30 advantage for the game, including 18 offensively.
Still, the Buffs’ ‘D’ was exemplary; CSU wound up shooting 35.6 percent from the field (21-for-59) and Boyle said he’d take that statistic over a rebounding edge.
“But I want both,” he added.
CU’s second-half challenge was to keep the pedal down, but CSU had other plans. With Iverson powering for four of his team’s first six points, the Rams opened the last half with a 6-0 run and pulled to within 42-28.
Dinwiddie’s turn . . . his free throw followed by back-to-back treys restored a 17-point (49-32) CU advantage. But rolling over wasn’t for the Rams; a 7-0 run pulled them within 10 points (49-39) with ample time – 13:25 – remaining.
After Boyle called time out, Dinwiddie delivered with a spinning layup (51-39) – and a frantic final 12 minutes began for both teams. The Rams closed their deficit to single digits (54-45) on a banker from the left side by Wes Eikmeier.
It was the closest they had been since 22-13, and they would get to 54-47 on a pair of Green free throws, 54-49 on an Iverson layup, then 54-51 on an Eikmeier layup with 6:45 left. That basket capped a 10-0 CSU run, and Boyle called time out.
Said Roberson: “We were focusing on continuing to get stops. We knew they would come back with a run, that they weren’t going to go away . . . we called a timeout and got everybody to calm down, keep our composure and get back to our defensive rebounding.”
A Dinwiddie free throw at the 6:21 mark finally got CU a point, a twisting lay-in by Booker got the Buffs two more, and a put-back by Scott pushed CU’s advantage to 59-51. They went back up by double digits (63-52) on a drive by Chen with just over 3 minutes remaining.
The Rams never got closer than seven points the rest of the night, and Boyle’s record against CSU went to 4-3 – 2-1 at CU. The word of the day to his team, he said, was “dictate . . . that was on our board in the locker room. Dictate tempo and pressure; let them know they were in for 40 minutes of in-your-face basketball . . . they did cut it to three but we didn’t lose our composure.”
Now, said Boyle, his team must do as it did Wednesday on a more consistent basis. “It feels good because we beat a good team; we knew how good CSU was,” he said. “It’s huge, but we’ve got a big game on Saturday.”
That would be at Boyle’s alma mater, No. 9 Kansas (noon MST, ESPN2). Boyle is 0-3 against the Jayhawks, with all three losses coming in his first season at CU.
Boulder Weather snow
Feb 23rd
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