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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Buffs’ Rally Comes Up Short Against Bruins
Jan 13th
By B.G. Brooks, CUBuffs.com Contributing Editor
BOULDER – Protecting a second-half lead wasn’t a problem on Saturday for the Colorado Buffaloes. Their dilemma this time was overcoming a 13-point second-half deficit – and they nearly did it.
Deep and talented UCLA led by a point at halftime, revved it up in the second half, then had to desperately hold on to beat CU 78-75 and deal the Buffs their first loss of the season at the Coors Events Center.
CU closed to within a point (76-75) on Spencer Dinwiddie’s layup, but UCLA’s Jordan Adams sank a pair of free throws with 7.9 seconds to play to give the Bruins their final lead. A three-point attempt from the left corner by Askia Booker bounced off the rim at the buzzer.
CU coach Tad Boyle said his team got the shot it wanted: “We drew that play up and got ‘Ski’ a wide-open three in the corner . . . we got the shots we wanted offensively, we really did what we set out to do in the last two or three minutes. But we didn’t get a stop when we needed to.”
When Booker’s shot didn’t go in, it left the Buffs 8-1 this season at the CEC and 39-5 at home in 21/2 seasons under Boyle. CU fell to 11-5 overall and 1-3 in the Pac-12 Conference while UCLA, winning its ninth straight game, improved to 14-3 and stayed unbeaten (4-0) in conference play.
Dinwiddie led CU with 23 points – 15 in the second half – while Booker and Josh Scott added 18 each. Scott also had nine rebounds. UCLA’s Travis Wear matched Dinwiddie’s point total and stepped up with clutch baskets when the Buffs were making their comeback. Adams added 18 points, with Shabazz Muhammad contributing 14 and Kyle Anderson 12 for UCLA.
Boyle called the loss “very disappointing, frustrating for our team and program . . . the margin for error is so thin in those games (and) our team is not where we need to be. It’s frustrating when you know opportunities are there and we don’t take advantage.”
But the Bruins played a large part in Saturday’s loss, and Boyle credited them for “making plays and free throws down the stretch.” Specifically, they hit eight of 11 in the final 61 seconds. And a pair of clutch field goals by Travis Wear also helped keep the Buffs at bay.
“He was terrific down the stretch,” Boyle said of the 6-10 Wear, who was 11-of-17 from the field. Added Dinwiddie: “(Wear) was the best player on the floor. He shot over 50 percent . . . give him a lot of credit. Some of our guys are not used to guarding a big guy outside like that.”
The Buffs, said Boyle, “played hard and competed, but we have to be more consistent from start to finish against good teams.” He drew on a quote from his former college coach at Kansas, Larry Brown: “Coming back is easy; coming back and winning is hard.”
For matchup purposes with the bigger Bruins, Boyle started freshman forward Xavier Johnson in place of senior Sabatino Chen for the second time this season. The 6-6 Johnson finished with eight points – seven in the first half – in 22 minutes.
The Buffs led by as many four points in the first half, but trailed by one (35-34) at intermission. It was only the second time this season that CU has trailed at halftime – the first being in early December at Kansas. And that trip didn’t turn out so well for the Buffs.
The Bruins’ biggest first-half lead was three on three occasions, with those meager advantages telling the story of an opening 20 minutes played at a controlled pace by both teams. When running was to be done, it was usually UCLA doing it; the Bruins had 10 fast break points to the Buffs’ four.
Neither team had a player in double figures in the opening half, and CU’s Andre Roberson didn’t get his first field goal until nearly 15 minutes in. He finished the half with four points and got one more in the second half. But he collected a game-high 12 rebounds.
CU fell well short of holding UCLA to 40 percent from the field. The Bruins hit 31 of their 60 field goal attempts (51.7 percent) while the Buffs finished at 25-for-57 (43.9 percent). CU won the board battle 34-32 and was better at the free throw line, hitting 20-of-27 – an upgrade from their 14-of-26 in the previous win against USC.
“But if we make three more, it might be a tie game,” Booker said. “We have to get better there.”
Booker said his futile trey at the buzzer “felt good” when it left his hand. After releasing the shot, he wound up flat on his back. Did he think he was fouled? “It doesn’t matter now, the game’s over,” he said.
UCLA scored the second half’s first five points on a layup by Travis Wear and a three-pointer by Muhammad, opening a six-point (40-34) lead and prompting a timeout by Boyle with 18:39 to play.
The Buffs had an answer – two of them. Treys by Booker and Dinwiddie tied the score at 42-42 with 16:09 remaining. But over the next 3 minutes, the Bruins outscored the Buffs 8-1 to go up by 50-43 – UCLA’s largest lead to that point.
It grew to 13 (58-45) just over 3 minutes later as the Buffs were held without a field goal during that nearly 6-minute span, getting only a pair of free throws from Dinwiddie. Meanwhile, Jordan capped the Bruins’ 14-3 run with a four-point play to make it 58-45 with 9:49 left.
CU got as close as 61-55 on a pair of free throws by Scott with 5:25 remaining, then crept to within five on two occasions in the final 2:15 on baskets by Dinwiddie and Scott. And possession by possession, the Buffs kept coming, giving themselves the chance to tie on Booker’s near-miss at the buzzer.
“’Ski’ is one of our best clutch shooters,” said Dinwiddie. “We’re not at all disappointed in getting that shot.”
Added Booker: “We shouldn’t have let it get to that point . . . I’m happy with way fought, that gave us a chance to tie and go to overtime.”
In its three previous Pac-12 games, CU squandered double-digit leads and lost two of the three games. On Saturday, Dinwiddie said he didn’t believe the Buffs lacked a sense of urgency, “We just hit these lulls on the offensive and defensive ends. Even if it happens on the offensive end, we can’t let it happen on the defensive end . . . we have to stay on pace and execute our plan.”
Doing it only becomes tougher. If the Buffs are to climb to .500 in the Pac-12, they must do it on the road. They travel to Washington (Thursday, 9:30 p.m. MST) and Washington State (Saturday, 8 p.m. MST) next week.
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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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