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CU men dispatch lowly Utes in overtime
Feb 1st
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – It was the kind of game that Tad Boyle had challenged his team to win – down-and-dirty, back-and-forth, blink-and-you’re-done.
Boyle’s Colorado Buffaloes didn’t blink. Never considered it either. Down 12 points in the second half, the Buffs caught Utah, got caught by a late Utes 3-pointer, then mustered enough want-to to win 79-75 in overtime Saturday at the Coors Events Center.
“Holy cow,” Boyle said afterwards. “We needed that one bad and our guys responded . . . because of what we’ve been through, it doesn’t matter who you are, you need to win your games at home and hold serve. We dropped one already (to UCLA) we’d love to have back. But it doesn’t work that way so this was a big game for us.”
Maybe bigger than big; monstrous wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
Losers in four of their previous five games without Spencer Dinwiddie and Tre’Shaun Fletcher, the Buffs needed step-up performances from stand-in players and command performances from their veterans. Finally, the afternoon came together on both fronts.
CU (16-6 overall, 5-4 Pac-12) had five players in double figures – four of them starters and two of those (Xavier Johnson, Josh Scott) finishing with double-doubles. Scott scored a game-high 20 points and tied Johnson, who scored 11, with a game-best 10 rebounds. Forward Wesley Gordon added 12 points and six rebounds as the Buffs blasted the Utes on the boards, 42-24.
CU was no less productive in the backcourt, with guards Askia Booker and Xavier Talton combining for 32 points. Booker’s stat line was near staggering: 18 points, eight rebounds, seven of the Buffs’ 13 assists, 7-of-10 from the free throw line and one steal.
But it was Talton who might have been the Buffs’ biggest force. Scoring a career-high 14 points, the sophomore from Sterling hit back-to-back 3-pointers during a 14-2 second-half run that brought CU back from its 12-point deficit. He also opened the OT scoring with another trey –
– as the Buffs finally put away the Utes (14-7, 3-6).
Talton, who with an angry cut under his left eye looked as if he’d gone 10 rounds in the ring rather than 22 minutes on the court, said he’d never experienced such a game – “Not on both ends. I think everybody just found me and I was feeling more confident. Just being in the gym this last week we talked about competing . . . we’ve been in the guy shooting a lot, so I think that’s something that’s helped out.”
The Buffs needed good rhythm and good vibes – more than desperately – and ultimately found both. At home for three games, CU couldn’t afford a loss to Utah to precede visits by Washington State (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., Pac-12 Network) and Washington (Sunday, Feb. 9, 6 p.m., ESPNU).
“This was a big game no matter how many we’d won or lost before,” Scott said. “It was a home game and you need to win at home. So, to me it was a next step for this team . . . a big step forward and hopefully it can keep going forward from here.”
Somewhere down the line – March perhaps? – losing at home to Utah would have left a bad mark. The Buffs had beaten the Utes in six of seven previous meetings, and Utah came to Boulder with a five-game road losing streak and having lost 10 road games in a row stretching to last season.
Those streaks almost ended at the CEC. After CU rallied from its 47-35 deficit to tie the score at 49-49 on the second of Talton’s back-to-back treys, Utah stayed close in the final 10 minutes and sent the game into overtime on Brandon Taylor’s fifth 3-pointer with 6 seconds left in regulation.
Utah had come into the game shooting 34 percent from beyond the arc, but the Utes shot 50 percent (four-of-eight) from long range in the first half and finished the game at 45.8 percent (11-of-24). Taylor and Delon Wright finished with 17 points each, with the versatile Wright adding 11 assists and seven steals – five of those in the first half.
They contributed to CU’s 10 first-half turnovers that produced 17 Utah points. But the Buffs settled themselves in the second half, committing only five more miscues, and amped up their board work to finish with a 42-24 advantage.
“We got out-rebounded by 18 – that’s the difference in the ball game,” said Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak. “Getting exposed in our last two games by that number of offensive rebounds by the other team, we don’t have a chance to compete against anybody.”
Boyle, meanwhile, called gathering offensive boards a large part of the mental makeup he’s been calling for: “Toughness shows up in rebounding stats . . . plus-18, that was the difference in the game.”
The Buffs fell behind 4-0, but quickly gathered themselves and led by as many as seven points on three occasions before the Utes stormed back with a 14-0 run and went up 33-26 with 2:53 left before halftime.
Utah stretched its lead to 12 by outscoring CU 10-4 to open the second half. The Utes added to their 3-point field goal total, getting a trey from Wright that followed a conventional three-point play by 7-foot center Dallin Bachynski, whose 7-2 older brother plays for Arizona State.
Down by 12 with 16:42 to play, the Buffs were sliding toward the abyss, but they never got there.
A 6-0 run – courtesy of two free throws by Xavier Johnson and baskets by Gordon and Eli Stalzer – sliced the Utes’ lead in half (47-41). And just over 3 minutes later, a 3-pointer by Xavier Talton from the left wing brought the Buffs to within 49-46 with 12:05 to play.
“You always want people to step up when their number is called,” Talton said. “I think Eli did a good job of that when he came in (and) Wesley definitely did on the boards getting the put backs and everything . . . Xavier Johnson as well. I think that if we continue to share the ball the sky’s the limit for our team.”
And “XT” wasn’t done; his trey from the left corner – set up by a Booker inside-out assist – completed a 14-2 CU run and tied the score at 49-49 at the 11:11 mark.
The last 10 minutes produced six lead changes and five ties – the final one at 62-62 after a Booker follow shot was waived off when the officials ruled the shot clock had expired.
After that, Gordon hit one of two free throws with 25 seconds left and Scott hit both of his after a Utah turnover with 19.2 seconds showing. The Buffs were up 65-62, but at the 6-second mark, Taylor drained his fourth trey of the game, tying the score and leaving time for a straightaway Booker 30-footer as time expired.
It bounded off the back of the rim and OT was next. Talton’s fourth trey of the afternoon put CU up 68-65 and Utah never caught up. After Talton added a 15-foot jumper to send the Buffs up 73-69, Booker hit five of six free throws in the OT’s final 45.8 seconds and Johnson added one of two. Another late Taylor trey pulled the Utes to 79-75 – but this one was over.
Boyle said he was most proud of Johnson’s performance and the maturity the sophomore is showing: “He’s a guy I challenged. He doesn’t like sitting on the bench but when he gives you the kind of effort he did today on both ends of the floor and rebounding the basketball, holy cow is he good.”
While conceding the game’s importance and what it might mean to the remainder of the home stand and season, Boyle refrained from calling it a “must-win.” Instead, he pared it down to this: “I want to talk about the ‘must’ possessions, because if you take care of the ‘must’ possessions the wins take care of themselves. And so do the losses when you don’t.”
More often than not on Saturday, the “must” possessions went to CU. And eventually, so did the “W.”
Dinwiddie out for the season
Jan 13th
BOULDER – If the Colorado Buffaloes are to make a run at the Pac-12 Conference regular-season championship and earn a school-record third consecutive NCAA Tournament berth, it will have to be done without point guard Spencer Dinwiddie.
The 6-6 junior’s 2013-14 season is over, ended by an ACL injury that will require surgery when swelling subsides in his left knee. The injury was suffered in the first half of Sunday afternoon’s Pac-12 Conference loss at Washington, and the prognosis that the Buffs and their fans dreaded was delivered Monday afternoon when Dinwiddie underwent a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam.
“It’s a big blow for him . . . he’s worked so hard to put himself in the position he has and help lead this team to where we are today,” CU coach Tad Boyle said. “To have that all taken away from you in one basketball play is . . . it’s tough.”
It was equally tough, Boyle said, for Dinwiddie’s teammates: “They’re hurting. No. 1, we’ve got a close, tight-knit team. We’ve got great chemistry on this team. Guys care about each other. From that standpoint, the team’s hurting. There’s no question in my mind they’re a resilient group of guys, high-character guys. One guy goes down the opportunity for two or three more opens. We’re going to control what we can control, which is our attitude and effort every day in practice. That’s all you can do in life.”
After Sunday’s game, sophomore post Josh Scott called Dinwiddie “a big part, not the whole part, but he’s a big part of what we do. It’s just an adjustment and we’re going to have to figure out how to do that without him.”
Dinwiddie can expect a complete recovery, said Boyle, but he refrained from offering a timeline because the rehabilitation of ACL injuries differs from athlete to athlete. After receiving the news, said Boyle, Dinwiddie was “great . . . he’s controlling the things he can control – which are his attitude and effort. Get the swelling out of the knee and the surgery will happen when the doctors feel it’s appropriate. Then the rehab starts.”
Boyle credited Dinwiddie for his maturity, noting the player was “handling it very well. He’s going to be better because of it. He’s going to have a full and complete recovery. That’s the good news. It’s not a situation where he’s going to come back and be 80 percent. He’s going to be 100 percent when he comes back, whenever that is. I don’t know how long, I don’t know what the time frame is in terms of the recovery. It’s not going to be an easy rehab, but he’ll be fine.”
So, too, might be the Buffs – if they understand their top scorer and floor leader can’t be replaced by a single player. Boyle used the analogy of CU having to replace last season’s No. 2 nationally ranked rebounder when Andre Roberson declared himself eligible for the NBA Draft. The 2013-14 Buffs, said Boyle, are a better rebounding team than last season because that role has been taken on by committee.
“Everybody thought we’d have trouble rebounding because Andre’s gone, and guess what?” noted Boyle. “We’re a better rebounding team today than we were last year with the second-best rebounder in the country on our team. So everybody stepped up and everybody has to do that with Spencer out. Not one person is going to replace him . . . with everybody stepping up their game up a little bit, we can lessen the blow.”
Dinwiddie, of Woodland Hills, Calif., was CU’S leader in scoring (14.7 ppg), assists (64, 3.8 apg) and steals (26, 1.5 spg). He also led the Buffs in 3-pointers (26) and free throw shooting percentage (85.7).
In his 21/2 seasons, Dinwiddie already had worked his way into the top five in two CU career categories – No. 3 in free throw percentage (420-of-506, 83 percent) and No. 4 in 3-point field goal percentage (115-of-298, 38.6 percent). He had been recognized nationally, making the Top 50 watch lists for the Cousy, Naismith and Wooden Awards.
Boyle said the Buffs, who meet UCLA on Thursday at the Coors Events Center (6 p.m., Pac-12 Network), will focus on that game and not how they must adapt to Dinwiddie’s loss over the next two months. “What I told the team is that we don’t have to beat every team without Spencer,” Boyle said. “We have to figure out a way to beat UCLA without Spencer. That’s all we’ve got to do. Nothing changes in our preparation and in what we’re going to try to do. We’re down a man and everybody else has to step up.”
Beginning with the Bruins, the only Pac-12 opponent the Buffs have not defeated (0-2), Boyle said Dinwiddie’s injury is of little consequence to the rest of the league: “Nobody . . . really cares. They’re not going to take pity on the Buffaloes. I can promise you that. UCLA is going to come in there Thursday trying to get a road win. We’ve got to make sure we compete our tails off, scratch and claw, do everything we have to do to try to beat them.”
Figuring to share Dinwiddie’s minutes are freshman Jaron Hopkins, who already has logged more court time than any of Boyle’s first-year players, and sophomores Xavier Talton and Eli Stalzer. Said Boyle: “All three capable of taking care of the ball and getting us in our offense . . . they’re good team guys who shoot it, dribble it and pass it.
“We don’t have the star system here. Spencer was our leading scorer and leading assist guy, he led us in steals. There’s no question he was important to our team. I’m not trying to minimize this loss, but I just want our players to realize they’re here for a reason: they’re capable as well. When one guy goes down, the door opens for one, or in this case, maybe two or three more.”
Dinwiddie went down when his left knee buckled with 2:51 left in the first half at Washington’s Alaska Airlines Arena. No other player was around him. At the time, CU was leading 25-22, and Dinwiddie had scored seven points, with one assist.
At halftime, the Buffs still led 29-26, but with Andrew Andrews and C.J. Wilcox opening the second half with 3-pointers, the Huskies outscored the Buffs 6-1 in the first 2 minutes and took a 32-30 lead. CU never caught up and suffered its first Pac-12 loss of the season, 71-54.
Wilcox, guarded mostly by Dinwiddie in the first half and held to 10 points, erupted for 21 in the second half – including 13 in the first 6 minutes – and finished with a career-high 31.
In Monday’s national polls, the Buffs (14-3, 3-1) slipped from No. 15/17 to No. 21 in the Associated Press weekly rankings and No. 22 in the USA Today/Coaches Poll. CU has been ranked for six consecutive weeks in the AP poll – the longest since eight straight weeks in 1997 – and for five consecutive weeks by the coaches.
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Andrew Green | Assistant Director Sports Information
Buffs come to play but no match for Stanford’s Ogwumike
Jan 12th
BOULDER – The Colorado Buffaloes battled gallantly on Sunday afternoon to find the edge their coach said they lacked, but making it pay off against Stanford’s Chiney Ogwumike and the No. 4 Cardinal was too big a task.
No. 17 CU cut a 19-point second-half deficit to seven in the final minute before finally succumbing 87-77 at the Coors Events Center. The Buffs (11-4, 1-3) dropped to 0-3 against ranked opponents this season and 7-2 at the CEC.
On Friday night, the Buffs were edged 57-55 by No. 19 California, and CU coach Linda Lappe challenged her team to play with more toughness. The Buffs did that on Sunday, but they struggled to find an answer for the Cardinal’s Ogwumike, who scored 34 points and collected 16 rebounds. The Stanford All-American scored 20 of her total in the first half, when the Cardinal (15-1, 4-0) rolled to a 55-38 lead.
Lappe called Ogwumike “one of the best players in the nation,” and Ogwumike’s performance underscored that. Ogwumike’s 34 points were the most by a CU opponent since Iowa State’s Lindsey Wilson scored 41 – the record against the Buffs – on Feb. 26, 2003.
Despite Ogwumike’s dominance, CU showed second-half resiliency, a response Lappe liked. “I definitely liked the way we fought back,” she said. “Any time you lose a tough one like we lost on Friday, you can go in either one of two directions; you can feel sorry for yourself or you can show a lot of courage, character and resiliency, and I really liked seeing our fight and our toughness tonight.
“I thought we fixed a lot of things that we talked about during film on Saturday, but Stanford’s good. You have to give them a lot of credit. It’s fair to say that they are at least the second best team in the nation . . . I felt like we gave it our best shot, put our best foot forward. We didn’t back down and you have to like that from our team.”
Veteran Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said she “wasn’t impressed” by her team’s overall effort: “I just think we looked a little tired. We weren’t as sharp as we needed to be. We have a great player in Chiney, and she really battled in there tonight.”
VanDerveer also credited CU, calling the Buffs “a top 20 team. They battled. Linda Lappe does a great job with her team. They are a very, very well coached team and she showed it tonight.”
Ogwumike got first-half help from freshman Karlie Samuelson, who scored 17 of her career-high 19 points in the opening half. Samuelson, who arrived in Boulder with a 3.8 point average, hitting five of her eight first-half 3-point attempts and both of her free throw tries.
Hitting four of its first five 3-point attempts, Stanford finished 10-of-21 from behind the arc and hit 21 of its 24 free throw attempts. CU had allowed just four 3-pointers in 29 attempts in its first three Pac-12 games and led the conference in 3-point defense (13.8 percent).
CU forward Arielle Roberson contended some of Samuelson’s long-range accuracy came from the Buffs’ “mental lapses” and wasn’t that surprising. “We knew she was a shooter, but we continued to let her get her shots off, so nothing is shocking about that because Stanford has great shooters,” Roberson said. “We weren’t in the correct matchup or helping off too much or not finding her in transitions. Miscommunications.”
CU was without junior guard Jasmine Sborov, who was on crutches after being diagnosed with a broken bone in her foot.
The Buffs got a career-best performance from sophomore forward Jamee Swan, who had team highs in points (20) and rebounds (13). Also scoring in double figures were Roberson (19), Brittany Wilson (15) and Lexy Kresl (10).
“I feel like I played pretty well,” Swan said. “I don’t think I could have done it without having my teammates helping me get to places I needed to get to and getting me the ball and all that kind of stuff. But it’s another game. It was a great game.”
Lappe called Swan’s performance “fantastic. We knew that we were going to need Jamee in games like this and she was going at a good pace today. She was aggressive; she’s a tough rebounder and physical player and at times, she gave Stanford a lot of problems.
“I liked her decision-making with the ball, I liked the way that she scored, and she played pretty good defense as well. It was tough to take her off the floor because we weren’t getting the rebounds we needed to get when she was not in there. I’m really proud of her stepping up and playing the best game she’s played all year.”
The Cardinal held a 19-point lead on two occasions early in the second half, but the Buffs refused to roll. They cut the deficit to 82-73 on a 3-pointer by Lauren Huggins, then to 82-75 on two free throws by Wilson with 1:02 to play.
But that was as close they got to the Cardinal, now 6-0 against the Buffs since CU joined the Pac-12 in 2011 and 11-4 all-time.
The Buffs stayed with the visitors for the game’s first 2:47, but after a 6-6 tie, Stanford began pulling away behind the 3-point shooting of Samuelson. After Ogwumike broke the tie with a trey, senior guard Sara James hit a three, giving the Cardinal a 12-6 lead.
And Stanford was off and bombing.
Less than 2 minutes later, Samuelson drained threes on consecutive possessions, pushing the Cardinal ahead 20-11 with 14:32 left before intermission. Stanford led by as many as 18 (46-28) before ending the half on – what else? – a Samuelson trey at the buzzer that gave her team a commanding 55-38 advantage.
Stanford, which normally shoots 47.9 percent from long range, was 8-of-15 (53 percent) from behind the arc, accounting for most of the damage as CU gave up its highest first-half total of the season and the most since 2006.
The Buffs entered the game allowing only 59 points a game and 57 in Pac-12 play. If CU was to have a chance at catching up, its defense would have to tighten dramatically.
An early second-half basket by Ogwumike gave the Cardinal its biggest lead – 59-40 – before the Buffs finally ratcheted up their ‘D.’ It helped when Ogwumike went to the bench briefly with three fouls at the 15-minute mark, and CU took advantage.
A 7-0 run on back-to-back baskets from Brittany Wilson and a three-point play by Swan pulled the Buffs to within 11 points (63-52) with 13:03 left. Stanford answered with an 8-0 run – six of the points by Ogwumike – and went back in front by 19 (71-52) with just under 9 minutes to play.
But CU wasn’t done. Runs of 5-0 and 6-0 pulled the Buffs back to within seven points before the Cardinal finally closed it out.
The Buffs play at Washington State on Friday (8 p.m. MST) and Washington on Sunday (5 p.m. MST)