CU men get sweet revenge on No. 16 Baylor to advance into tourney championship
Nov 16th
By B.G. Brooks, Contributing Editor
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Revenge is sweet. Is payback sweeter? Doesn’t matter. The Colorado Buffaloes got both Friday afternoon in the Charleston Classic, holding off No. 16 Baylor 60-58 to advance to the tournament’s championship game.
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Revenge is sweet. Is payback sweeter? Doesn’t matter. The Colorado Buffaloes got both Friday afternoon in the Charleston Classic, holding off No. 16 Baylor 60-58 to advance to the tournament’s championship game.
The tournament takes a day off Saturday, with play resuming Sunday. The opponent is to be determined, but the Buffs will play for the championship at 6:30 p.m. MST (ESPN2) in the TD Arena.
CU reeled in a rare signature win in November, with its last defeat of a ranked team in non-conference play dating to 1973. Buffs coach Tad Boyle understood the magnitude of that as well as what it meant to defeat Baylor.
“In our first year (at CU), we’re up 10 at the half down there; we let one slip away,” a joyous Boyle said. “Last year in the NCAA Tournament we had another chance . . . it was a tie game with four or five minutes to go and we didn’t finish it off.
“That’s why I was so excited after the game – and that we had fans down here to support this team and program. I want them to know how much we appreciate it and all the people back home who couldn’t make the trip.”
CU’s last win against a ranked opponent came last March in the NCAA Tournament, when the Buffs defeated No. 23 UNLV. In the next game in Albuquerque, N.M, Baylor ousted the Buffs 80-63.
After Thursday’s 67-57 win against Dayton here, CU players were pointing at Baylor. They got their wish Friday – but making it come true wasn’t easy. On the game’s final play, Baylor’s 7-1 freshman, Isaiah Austin, caught a three-quarter length of the court rainbow pass, but missed at the buzzer.
“I held my breath,” said CU junior Andre Roberson. “I thought he was going to hit the shot. But he missed it luckily and we came out with the win.”
Added Buffs sophomore Askia Booker: “All kinds of things are running through your brain, but you try to stay positive with your teammates,” We’ve been here before, we’ve been in close games. We just had to fight through it and stay together and be positive.”
Booker led the Buffs with a career-high 19 points – 16 in the first half. Spencer Dinwiddie (11) was the only other CU player in double figures. Baylor (3-1) was led by Cory Jefferson’s 17, with Pierre Jackson adding 12.
CU made only four of 18 free throw attempts, including missing five of six in the final 1:01. The four makes were the fewest in a Buffs win since the 1980 team sank only two against Oklahoma in a 60-59 win. Fortunately on Friday, Booker hit one of two with 11.6 seconds to play, giving CU its narrow margin.
The Buffs (3-0) led four times in the first half, three of the advantages coming in the first 5 minutes and the first coming on a Dinwiddie trey (5-2). From there, CU’s challenge seemed to be staying close – and it was a challenge.
But Booker and the Buffs were up for it.
The long and athletic Bears twice led by five points in the first 20 minutes, with their second advantage coming on the heels of a controversial blocking call against Josh Scott. One official – the trio was from the Big 12 – whistled a charging foul on Pierre Jackson, but an outside official overruled it.
The officials huddled, the Buffs bench objected, but the call stood. Jackson hit one of two free throws, then added a three-pointer on the next Baylor possession, sending the Bears up 22-17.
CU – especially Booker – had loads of fight left. He tied the score at 22-22 with a trey at the about the 5 minute mark. After Baylor had crept ahead by three, Andre Roberson stepped back and drained a three-pointer to tie it again at 30-30.
Then it was “Ski Season” in South Carolina – at least for the first half’s final minute. With the shot clock ticking toward zero on CU’s next-to-last possession, Booker drained his second trey of the half to send the Buffs up 33-30.
When Baylor gave up the ball on the ensuing possession, the Buffs left the final 17 seconds wind down – with the ball in Booker’s hands. With two seconds showing, he pulled up just inside the three-point arc at the top of the key. His soft jumper nestled into the net and CU left the court with a 35-30 halftime lead.
Booker finished the half with a game-best 16 points on a career-high seven field goals and was the only player on either team in double figures. He called it “absolutely” the best half of his college career: “At this level, with this intensity, yeah it was.”
The Buffs outrebounded the Bears 22-17 – a Tad Boyle mandate – in the first and 41-40 for the game. Boyle called that “no easy task because they have some length and good athletes out there who are a little bit longer than ours and little more athletic at some positions. But our guys found a way and we overcame.”
CU gave up only three three-pointers to Baylor – a huge upgrade from their last meeting in March in the NCAA Tournament when the Bears’ Brady Heslip gunned down nine of 12 from beyond the arc for 27 points. In Friday’s first half, Heslip had two points and 0-for-3 from three-point range. He finished with seven points – and one trey.
Boyle’s biggest concern might have been his team’s first-half free throw shooting. After going only 14-of-24 from the line against Dayton, CU ended Friday’s first half one-for-six and finished the afternoon with 14 misses.
But the Buffs had other issues to open the second half, turning the ball over on two of their first four possessions and leaving Heslip open in transition. His first trey of the afternoon – and his only one of the game — brought the Bears to 37-35 in the first 3 minutes.
Baylor tied the score at 37-37 on a baby hook by Cory Jefferson, but Boyle and his bench believed Jefferson’s toss didn’t beat the shot clock. Whatever, the game was tied with 151/2 minutes to play and CU couldn’t allow Baylor to muster any more momentum.
At the 10-minute mark, the Bears took a 45-44 lead – their first since 30-27 – on a twisting drive and layup by Deuce Bello. The Buffs answered with a key trey from the left wing by Eli Stalzer and a goal tending call on a steal/layup by Sabatino Chen.
That four-point CU advantage (49-45) wilted fast. Baylor went inside and got immediate results from the 7-1 Austin and 6-8 Rico Gathers, who pulled the Bears within 50-49 with 7:30 remaining. But the Buffs stayed focused.
After Josh Scott scored on a goal tending call on Austin, Dinwiddie buried a three-pointer, sending the Buffs up 55-51. They hawked the ball on the Bears’ next possession, forcing a tie up that went to CU. Dinwiddie hit again, this time a two-pointer to give the Buffs their biggest lead at 57-51 with 3:40 to play.
But could they hold it? Yes, but with difficulty.
At the 3:00 mark, Baylor – trailing 57-52 – began pressing and extended its halfcourt defense. With 1:55 left, Jefferson hit a follow shot (57-54), Dinwiddie answered with a floating layup (59-54), Jackson countered with a jumper (59-56) and then added two free throws (59-58) with 19.8 seconds to play.
Dinwiddie missed the front end of a one-and-one, but Shane Harris-Tunks controlled the rebound. Booker was fouled with 11.6 seconds showing, hit the front end of his one-and-one (60-58) then missed the second.
Baylor rebounded, A.J. Walton drove the length of the court but couldn’t hit a difficult running shot from the right side. Roberson got the last of his 12 rebounds, was fouled and went to the free throw line. With 3.1 seconds left, he missed both attempts but in the scramble for the second miss, time nearly expired.
Baylor got possession with 0.2 remaining. Austin caught a lob pass just above the free throw line, turned, shot . . . and missed.
The Buffs had one sweet ‘W.’
“It’s revenge, it means a lot,” Booker said. “It burned last year in our hearts. Just knowing we could have this chance and we finally got it. We took full advantage of it. I loved it.”
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CU-NOAA study shows summer climate change, mostly warming
Nov 15th
Analysis of 90 years of observational data has revealed that summer climates in regions across the globe are changing — mostly, but not always, warming –according to a new study led by a scientist from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences headquartered at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It is the first time that we show on a local scale that there are significant changes in summer temperatures,” said lead author CIRES scientist Irina Mahlstein. “This result shows us that we are experiencing a new summer climate regime in some regions.”
The technique, which reveals location-by-location temperature changes rather than global averages, could yield valuable insights into changes in ecosystems on a regional scale. Because the methodology relies on detecting temperatures outside the expected norm, it is more relevant to understand changes to the animal and plant life of a particular region, which scientists would expect to show sensitivity to changes that lie outside of normal variability.
“If the summers are actually significantly different from the way that they used to be, it could affect ecosystems,” said Mahlstein, who works in the Chemical Sciences Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory.
To identify potential temperature changes, the team used climate observations recorded from 1920 to 2010 from around the globe. The scientists termed the 30-year interval from 1920 to 1949 the “base period,” and then compared the base period to other 30-year test intervals starting every 10 years since 1930.
The comparison used statistics to assess whether the test interval differed from the base period beyond what would be expected due to yearly temperature variability for that geographical area.
Their analysis found that some changes began to appear as early as the 1960s, and the observed changes were more prevalent in tropical areas. In these regions, temperatures varied little throughout the years, so the scientists could more easily detect any changes that did occur, Mahlstein said.
The scientists found significant summer temperature changes in 40 percent of tropical areas and 20 percent of higher-latitude areas. In the majority of cases, the researchers observed warming summer temperatures, but in some cases they observed cooling summer temperatures.
“This study has applied a new approach to the question, ‘Has the temperature changed in local areas?’ ” Mahlstein said. The study is in press in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
The study’s findings are consistent with other approaches used to answer the same question, such as modeling and analysis of trends, Mahlstein said. But this technique uses only observed data to come to the same result. “Looking at the graphs of our results, you can visibly see how things are changing,” she said.
In particular the scientists were able to look at the earlier time periods, note the temperature extremes, and observe that those values became more frequent in the later time periods. “You see how the extreme events of the past have become a normal event,” Mahlstein said.
The scientists used 90 years of data for their study, a little more than the average lifespan of a human being. So if inhabitants of those areas believe that summers have changed since they were younger, they can be confident it is not a figment of their imagination.
“We can actually say that these changes have happened in the lifetime of a person,” Mahlstein said.
Co-authors on the study were Gabriele Hegerl from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Susan Solomon from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.
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CU project: Degraded military lands to get ecological boost
Nov 15th
Some arid lands in the American West degraded by military exercises that date back to General George Patton’s Word War II maneuvers in the Mojave Desert should get a boost from an innovative research project led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
Headed up by CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Nichole Barger, the research team is focused on developing methods to restore biological soil crusts — microbial communities primarily concentrated on soil surfaces critical to decreasing erosion and increasing water retention and soil fertility. Such biological soil crusts, known as “biocrusts,” can cover up to 70 percent of the ground in some arid ecosystems and are dominated by cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, fungi and bacteria, she said.
The project is aimed at restoring fragile habitats in desert areas that have been affected by the movement of U.S. military vehicles, including tanks, as well as high foot traffic, said Barger, a faculty member in CU-Boulder’s ecology and environmental biology department. The team has two U.S. Department of Defense study sites — Fort Bliss, which straddles southern Texas and New Mexico and is located in a hot desert environment, and the Dugway Proving Ground in northwest Utah, seated in a cool desert environment.
“Biocrusts often are associated with increased soil nutrients and water retention, but their most important task is to stabilize soil surfaces against wind and water erosion,” Barger said. “While most biocrusts are relatively resilient to wind and water erosion, they are highly susceptible to compressional forces like those generated by foot and vehicle traffic associated with ground-based military activities.”
At military installations like Fort Bliss, the Dugway Proving Ground and in the California/Arizona Maneuver Area in the Mojave Desert used by Patton’s troops, scars of past military activity still are evident, said Barger. “You can go to these places and see that the biocrusts in the old tank tracks, for example, are completely different than nearby biocrusts undisturbed by military activity.”
The project is being funded by a five-year, $2.3 million grant from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, the U.S. Department of Defense environmental science and technology program that partners with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. The research team also includes Jayne Belnap, Michael Duniway and Sasha Reed from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Biological Resources Division in Moab, Utah and Ferran Garcia-Pichel of Arizona State University in Tempe.
The first step of the program will be to grow biocrusts in laboratories at ASU, said Barger. “Our approach will be to expose laboratory biocrusts over time to a physiological ‘boot camp’ that includes increasing stressors like heat, light and dryness,” she said. “By doing that, we believe the biocrusts we eventually transplant into the study areas will have a higher probability of survival.”
The lab-grown biocrust products will be dried, bagged and transported to field test sites at each respective military installation and sprinkled on soil surfaces, said Barger.
Once in the field, the stress-adapted biocrusts developed in the lab nurseries for both hot desert and cool desert environments will be combined with other soil stabilization strategies, she said. The team, for example, will also experiment with adding polyacrylamide — a soil-stabilizing compound shown to increase soil porosity and reduce erosion, compaction, dustiness and water run-off — to the mix.
The researchers will evaluate the effectiveness of such soil “inoculations” and determine the optimum dosage for the test sites. Following the assisted recovery of the local biocrusts at Fort Bliss and the Dugway Proving Ground, the team will begin a series of seeding trials to develop strategies for native plant re-establishment, Barger said.
The last step of the project will involve a series of rainfall simulations and wind tunnel experiments combined with broad-scale soil erosion modeling to evaluate the influence of biocrust and native plant restoration in terms of precipitation and soil erosion.
While DOD military installations cover nearly 30 million acres — 70 percent of which are located in arid regions of the West — Barger said the research also could aid in the effective management of other federal lands. “We think our work on biocrusts also will be of interest to land managers at agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service,” Barger said.
The adaptation of biocrusts to extreme environments likely will come into play even more as climate change continues to heat and dry the West, she said. “We expect the drought in the Southwest to intensify as a result of climate change, and this project should tell us more about how adaptive these biocrusts are under shifting environmental conditions.”
The research project also has health implications, said Barger, since the disturbance of biocrusts can trigger the release of significant amounts of atmospheric dust, a dominant pollutant in some desert metropolitan areas. “There is a broad societal interest in stabilizing dryland soils in order to protect not only the functioning of local ecosystems but also human populations that reside in surrounding communities.”
“In terms of tackling an important environmental issue, this is by far the most exciting research project that I have been involved in,” said Barger, who has worked in Hawaii, Central America, South America, China and South Africa.
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