Colorado
6-2
Colorado State
7-3
Women Follow Men's Lead In Unsightly Loss
December 11, 2009 | Women's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
FORT COLLINS - Following the bad example set by their male counterparts 24 hours earlier, the Colorado women's basketball team played in spurts Friday night and paid for it with an ugly loss.
Colorado State, with only eight available players, overcame miserable early shooting and a 16-point first-half deficit to defeat CU 69-61 in Moby Arena. On the same court Thursday night, the CSU men outworked and overran the CU men, 77-62.
"I told them this was one that was going to stick with us all week," Buffaloes coach Kathy McConnell-Miller said. "We need to learn how to put teams away. We need to learn how to be efficient down the stretch."
CU (6-2) was everything but efficient, losing its big first-half lead, its momentum and eventually unraveling to lose for the first time in five games.
Senior Bianca Smith led the Buffs with 19 points, while Brittany Spears added 15 and Meagan Malcolm-Peck 12. Four of the Rams' eight players finished in double figures, led by Chatilla Van Grinsven with 16.
CU led for the final time, 55-54, on a layup by Spears with 2:57 to play. But from that point, CSU (7-3) went on a 7-0 run to move ahead 61-55. The Buffs never got closer than four points for the remainder of the game, self-destructing with four of their 16 turnovers in the final 2:20.
Meanwhile, the Rams put the game away by making 11 of 12 free throws in the final 1:52. They finished the game 27-of-33 from the foul line while the Buffs hit 9-of-11.
CSU also outrebounded CU 45-43, including 15 offensive rebounds, and outscored the Buffs 20-13 in second-chance points.
"We didn't win the hustle plays," CU guard Alyssa Fressle said. "We've got to learn to put teams away and develop a killer instinct."
Smith said she and her teammates might have allowed the officials "to get into our heads a little bit" with the disparity of fouls called (25-14).
Added McConnell-Miller: "I think they got a little frustrated with the contact on the drives. And I think that set in a little bit and had them second-guessing whether to go (to the basket) or not to go, because there was a lot of contact."
Smith also said - and McConnell-Miller agreed - that the Buffs' poor shooting percentage (33.3 percent to CSU's 32.1) mostly was due to poor shot selection.
"We settled a lot for threes," McConnell-Miller said. "And we had the wrong people taking threes. We tried to get some drives; we tried to get to the rim and we turned it over or made poor decisions . . . that's a credit to their defense."
At times, McConnell-Miller said, the Buffs "played extremely hard . . . they really wanted it. But at times, I thought whether it was a lack of communication on defense or a quick shot that led to a run by them, it wasn't a lack of preparation or effort.
"It was just a mindset of we settled . . . often and early in the shot clock."
Not much went right for the Rams in the early going, but taking advantage of the Buffs' proclivity for fouling was among them. CU committed 11 first-half fouls, reaching seven fouls (single bonus) with 10:49 left in the half and 10 fouls (double bonus) at 4:14 before intermission.
As a result, CSU hit 10-of-13 first-half free throws - and needed every one of them. A little over 13 minutes into the first half, the Rams had connected on only one of their 14 field goal attempts (7.1 percent) and had fallen behind by 16 points (27-11).
But what had all the earmarks of a possible blowout suddenly changed. Then, CSU found its range - relatively speaking. Over the final 5:03 of the half, the Rams outscored the Buffs 12-4 and went to the locker room trailing 31-23.
Of letting CSU back into the game before intermission, McConnell-Miller said, "Whether I let up, whether I went too deep in the bench - I'll take responsibility for that . . . they capitalized and we sent them into the half on a little momentum."
Still, CSU's first-half shooting was horrid and CU's wasn't much better. The Rams hit only five of their 28 (17.9 percent) field goal attempts, while the Buffs were 11-for-32 (34.4).
Outscoring the visitors 11-2 over the first 4 minutes of the second half, CSU pulled to 33-32 on a pair of Van Grinsven free throws then took a 34-33 lead - the Rams' first since 3-2 - on a layup by Natalie van den Adel.
The Buffs answered with a 7-0 run - five of the points came courtesy of Spears - to reclaim a six-point lead (40-34). Just as quickly, though, CSU leading scorer Kim Mestdagh (19.4) scored seven consecutive points and Erin Cooke hit a layup - and the Rams went back ahead 43-42 with 11:51 left.
The next 4 minutes belonged to Smith and the Buffs. Relishing her off-the-bench role, the senior hit back-to-back treys to push CU in front 50-46.
Over the next 6 minutes, five of the game's 13 lead changes occurred. But in the final 1:30, the Rams went up six points and the Buffs foundered.
"This one is real tough to take - just bad all the way around," Spears said.
CU has eight days to digest it, playing next on Dec. 19 against Southern Utah (7 p.m., Coors Events Center).
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
