DALLAS ? The fourth-seeded Colorado Buffaloes fell to five seed Texas Tech 79-69 in a quarterfinal game at the American Airlines Center here Friday.
Blair Wilson's 16-point performance, including four three-pointers, wasn't enough to lift the Buffaloes (18-10) over the Red Raiders (22-9), who avenged an earlier 85-75 loss to the Buffaloes.
“It was a hard loss,” Wilson said. “They outplayed us and were tougher today. They hustled and got to the boards, they just outplayed us.”
After keeping the game close through the first half, and going into the break knotted at 34, Tech was too much for Colorado to handle in the second.
Tech jumped out to a five-point lead six minutes into the second and Colorado would chase them the rest of the way. The Buffs shot just 41 percent from the field in the half an 43.5 percent overall and struggled on the boards as Texas Tech grabbed 44 rebounds to the Buffs' 31.
Ronald Ross had a game-high 25 points for Tech, including a stretch of eight straight, as Tech built its lead to a game-high 11 points with 3:50 remaining.
Colorado would chip away at the lead, with back-to-back threes from Chris Copeland and Marcus Hall, who had 14 points for the Buffs, but would get no closer than seven with 2:30 remaining.
Glean Eddy had 10 points for the Buffs and was 2-of-2 from three-point range. Colorado's two leading scorers on the year, David Harrison (17.1 ppg) and Michel Morandais (14.1 ppg) combined for just 16 points. Morandais' eight points tied his season low.
The Buffs, who seemed to struggle in every facet of their game, turned the ball over 14 times and shot a season-low 30.8 percent from the free throw line.
Michael Marshall scored 23 points for Texas Tech and the conference's all-time leading scorer, Andre Emmett had 13 points.
Colorado will now await the NCAA tournament selection show on Sunday to see whether they will make a second consecutive trip to the Big Dance.
“We finished fourth in our conference,” Harrison said. “If we're not selected in the tournament, I think it'll be a travesty. Just because we're the University of Colorado, it's like we're on the bubble. With the same record, if your last name happened to be Kansas or Missouri, it wouldn't even be a question.”
The waiting game will end when the bracket announcement is made at 4 p.m. on CBS.
