Posts tagged Tre Shaun Fletcher
CU’s MBB Overcome Themselves (And Elon) In 80-63 Win
Dec 14th
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – Colorado coach Tad Boyle seriously doubted that a post-Kansas hangover reared its head on Friday night and his junior point guard, Spencer Dinwiddie, was even more emphatic.
“Not at all,” said Dinwiddie after No. 21 Colorado had finally disposed of Elon University 80-63 at the Coors Events Center. “It’s a credit to our team – we move on fast after wins and losses . . . I just don’t think we gave (Elon) the respect they deserved and we didn’t guard them at the three-point line.”
Yet as erratic and simply puzzling as the Buffaloes (10-1) were in several areas – shooting free throws, protecting the ball and defending the long ball to name three – they still won their tenth consecutive game, which hasn’t been done in CU basketball in 52 years.
Said Boyle: “It gives you an idea of where our program is when we win by 17 at home and people are kind of disappointed and frustrated. So I guess that’s a good sign.”
Such is progress, particularly when it follows six days after one of the benchmarks in program history – a 75-72 buzzer-beating victory over then-No. 6 KU. In the wild aftermath of that game, Boyle’s message to his team had been: “Don’t get drunk on your own wine.”
According to Dinwiddie at least, the Buffs took it to heart and head. But on Friday night, CU stumbled around just enough and Elon hit more than enough treys to make Boyle and the CEC crowd of 8,831 occasionally uneasy. The Phoenix’ 13 made treys (32 attempts) was an opponent high this season against the Buffs.
Boyle called the Phoenix (5-5) “a good team” that will win its share of games in the Southern Conference. But he also said his team won “a take-care-of-business-game” with a “workmanlike effort” – hardly superlatives after a superlative Saturday against the Jayhawks.
“Some nights it’s not going to be as pretty . . . there’s still a lot of improvement to be made,” Boyle said. “But I thought the cream rose in the second half.”
CU’s cream on this night: Dinwiddie, Xavier Johnson, Josh Scott and freshman George King. Dinwiddie finished with 17 points, seven assists and six rebounds, while Johnson and Scott each contributed 12 points and had double-doubles. King scored 10 off the bench, helping CU roll to a 31-6 edge in that area, and had a second-half tip-dunk that perked up his team and the crowd.
“Like coach Boyle said, I’m just trying to get my number called,” said King, who played 14 minutes (he had 15 against Arkansas State). “I didn’t know I was going to get this much time, but I had success on the boards (four rebounds) and attacking their defense. I got more time and I took advantage of it.”
Johnson, said Boyle, was a first-half “beast,” getting 11 of his 15 rebounds in the opening 20 minutes. Scott added 13 rebounds as CU bashed Elon 54-27 on the boards.
“To Colorado’s credit, first of all they are very good, they are very talented,” said Elon coach Matt Matheny. “But they out-rebounded us in the first half by 22 . . . we cannot expect to hang around with a top 25 team (like that). They really just abused us on the glass.”
But the Phoenix – specifically 6-8 senior Sebastian Koch – returned the abuse from beyond the arc. After opening the scoring with a trey, Koch drained another eight for the night, finishing nine of 14 from long range for a game-best 27 points.
“They shot threes very well,” Dinwiddie understated. “The open looks we gave them in the first half – that we shouldn’t have, that they missed – went in the second half. That, along with them slowing us down in the zone, really made it close.”
Also keeping the Phoenix in touch was the Buffs’ misfiring at the free throw line. CU finished the night 27-of-46, which certainly has Boyle’s attention but doesn’t panic him. “We chart every free throw in practice,” he said. “Our worst shooter in practice is shooting 75 percent . . . free throw shooting is a very individualistic thing; you get in the gym and do what you have to do. I have confidence they can do it in a game.”
Maybe more puzzling to him than the clanked foul shots were the Buffs’ 12 first-half turnovers – four more than they committed all game against the Jayhawks. Fortunately, CU’s second-half total (four) didn’t match the first half, but in comparing the 16 turnovers against Elon to the eight against KU, Boyle said, “As a coach, you scratch your head over that one.”
The Buffs didn’t score for nearly 4 minutes, missed their first five shots and committed five of their dozen first-half turnovers during that span. Elon surged to a 13-6 lead on Koch’s three-pointer with 12:25 left before halftime.
A couple of minutes before that, Boyle had seen enough. He pulled his five starters and replaced them with senior Ben Mills, sophomore Xavier Talton and freshmen Dustin Thomas, Tre’Shaun Fletcher and King.
A change did the Buffs good – or at least refocused them.
They caught and passed the Phoenix on a trey by Johnson from the left wing, grabbing their first lead at 17-16 with 10:10 left in the half. They outscored the Phoenix 21-5 to go up 27-18, with Dinwiddie hitting back-to-back treys at the run’s conclusion. In the half’s last 12 minutes, CU outscored Elon 35-13 and took a 41-26 lead to their locker room, matching their biggest advantage to that point.
CU pushed its lead to 19 (49-30) in the first 31/2 minutes of the second half, but Elon answered with five consecutive 3-pointers to pull to 52-45. Koch drained three of the five triples, with Tanner Sampson (12 points) accounting for the other pair.
The Buffs countered with a triple and a shorter jumper from Xavier Talton (nine points, six rebounds) and a layup and free throw from Scott to build another double-digit lead – 60-47. The Phoenix closed to 69-60 on a layup by Ryan Winters with 6:20 to play, but a conventional three-point play and a subsequent layup by Dinwiddie pushed CU ahead 74-60 with just over 3 minutes remaining.
The trey-happy Koch wasn’t done. He reached 27 points with his ninth triple of the night, bringing Elon to within 74-63 at the 2:59 mark. But when “XJ” responded with consecutive layups, pushing CU ahead by 15 (78-63), Elon was finally done.
For a second consecutive game, CU redshirt freshman Wesley Gordon remained sidelined due to illness/injury. He was on the bench in street clothes, but Boyle said Gordon would be ready to play on Saturday, Dec. 21 against No. 7 Oklahoma State in the MGM Grand Showcase in Las Vegas.
The Buffs’ 10-game winning streak – something that hasn’t been done in CU hoops since the 1944-45 season – “is another milestone,” Boyle said. “I haven’t talked to this team a lot – because we’re so darn young – about what their legacy is going to be. But as we move into conference play I think those are things we need to talk about and celebrate. It’s a great thing; 52 years is a long time.”
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Poor offense doomed the Buffs at Baylor
Nov 9th
By Anthony Lepine, CU Sports Information Student Assistant
DALLAS – The Colorado Buffaloes opened a highly anticipated 2013-14 basketball season with a disappointing offensive performance against No. 25 Baylor, falling 72-60 Friday night in the Buckets and Boots Showcase at the American Airlines Arena.
CU shot a dismal 33.3 percent, hitting just 22 of its 66 field goal attempts and never led in the contest. Nonetheless, with 2:23 remaining the Buffs trailed by only six after a layup by Josh Scott cut Baylor’s lead to 64-58.
“We cut it to six at that one point,” CU head coach Tad Boyle said, “but, we couldn’t get over the hump.”
The Buffs regained possession after a missed jumper by Baylor’s Cory Jefferson and a rebound by Wesley Gordon. But a bad possession ending with a forced jumper by Askia Booker left the Buffs still down six and needing a stop.
Instead, Baylor 7-footer Isaiah Austin connected on a jump hook and the Buffs again trailed by eight.
However, the Bears fouled Buffs junior guard Spencer Dinwiddie – who boasts an 82 percent career free-throw percentage – at the line with 47 seconds remaining. His pair of free throws again cut Baylor’s lead to six, but Baylor junior college transfer Kenny Chery answered with a pair of foul shots and CU was all but finished.
Dinwiddie’s three-point attempt rimmed out, the Bears corralled the rebound and finished out the game at the free-throw line, sending the Buffs back to Boulder 0-1.
“It’s disappointing, but it’s not the end of the world,” Boyle said. “We have to keep getting better, that’s all you can do . . . I just want to play hard, play smart and play together.”
The Buffaloes were missing their typical offensive production that has come to be expected from
Scott was the bright spot on offense for Colorado as the sophomore finished with a double-double, scoring 15 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. Scott’s frontcourt-mate, redshirt freshmen Wesley Gordon, also delivered for the Buffaloes starting in his first career game.
Gordon finished with nine points and eight rebounds, and Boyle classified Gordon’s performance as “terrific.”
“I was nervous just because it was my first time really playing for a while,” Gordon said. “I just wanted to make sure I was doing my job out there. I expected it would be a physical game.”
Boyle relied on all of his freshmen in the season opener as the first two Buffs off the bench were true freshmen Tre’Shaun Fletcher and Dustin Thomas. Classmates Jaron Hopkins and George King would also be thrust into action early on in the game.
“I thought they played aggressively,” Boyle said. “They’re going to make mistakes, and I’m not down on those guys at all. They just have to learn from it and hopefully understand at this level you can’t make those mistakes.
“But, I love our freshmen. It’s not about our freshmen (the loss), it’s about our veteran guys that we need to play like they’ve been here and play at the level that they need to play at to win these kinds of games against this kind of competition.”
The Buffs will look to pick up their first win of the season on Sunday at 4 p.m. against Tennessee-Martin in the home opener at the Coors Events Center.
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CU men snag a “sleeper” high school basketball player for next year
May 14th
BOULDER – University of Colorado men’s basketball head coach Tad Boyle and his coaching staff announced Monday they have signed George King, a 6-foot-5, 205-pound forward from San Antonio, Texas to a National Letter of Intent. King will be a freshman at CU beginning of the 2013 fall semester.
King will be one of four true-freshmen on the Buffaloes team that will also feature a pair of redshirt-freshmen. He joins fellow freshmen Tre’Shaun Fletcher, Jaron Hopkins, and Dustin Thomas. The incoming class also features redshirt-freshmen Wesley Gordon and Chris Jenkins, both sat out this past season.
“He can rebound, block shots, shoot and defend,” Boyle said of CU’s latest addition to the roster.
Boyle also said CU was “kind of late to the party” in recruiting King, who conceded he was a “late bloomer” and didn’t start attracting major attention until late in his senior season and went through the April signing period unsigned.
During his senior year, King averaged 16.6 points, 11.5 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game in leading the Brennan Bears to a 39-3 record and an appearance in the 4A state semifinals. He shot 60 percent from the field and was named both TABC All-State and District 28-4A MVP. As a senior he recorded 25 double-doubles and had two 20-20 games with 23 points and 20 rebounds against Warren (Nov. 12) and 20 points and 20 rebounds against Lanier (Jan. 29) including 12 rebounds in one quarter.
King was an all-area selection as a junior.
“They believe in me and I believe in them,” King told Rivals.com on signing with the Buffaloes. “I’ve only been to Colorado a handful of times and it was my first time in Boulder,” he said. “I knew I liked it as soon as I stepped foot in Boulder. It has a beautiful campus, really nice people.”
“They have a really good coaching staff, the players and I really clicked. I got up and down with the guys and got a good feeling. (The coaches) like that I’m good sized, I’m skilled, that I can shoot and that I have a lot of potential.”
CU returns two seniors (Ben Mills, Kevin Nelson) on the 2013-2014 roster; along with three juniors (Askia Booker, Spencer Dinwiddie, Beau Gamble); and four sophomores (Xavier Johnson, Josh Scott, Eli Stalzer, Xavier Talton).
By the end of the summer, the Buffs will have graduated three student-athletes (Jeremy Adams, Sabatino Chen, Shane Harris-Tunks). Andre Roberson, who had one more year of eligibility remaining, declared for the NBA Draft on April 28. His sister, Arielle Roberson was nationally ranked as a freshman, will be a sophomore on CU’s women’s basketball team next season.
CU sports media release
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