Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: Disappointed Buffs Seeking To Recreate The Buzz
January 24, 2011 | Men's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
With a pair of losses at Nebraska and Oklahoma, the Buffaloes' eye-opening 3-0 Big 12 Conference start has deteriorated to an eye-rubbing 3-2. About 10 days ago, CU Coach Tad Boyle was musing how quickly things can turn in college basketball, and his team found itself mired in a downturn last week.
"We're very disappointed in last week, the way we've played," Boyle said Monday. "I think we opened some eyes there in the first week and a half. Maybe we're coming back to reality, I don't know. That's why you've got to play the whole conference race to figure out where everything shakes out."
If you paid attention to the losses in Lincoln and Norman, you've got a pretty good idea of why things didn't shake out well for the Buffs last week. Start with shooting: if they don't shoot well - and truth be told, they haven't shot well in three consecutive games - the undersized Buffs become more vulnerable than most.
In non-conference play, CU was averaging almost 85 points. Since conference play began, the output in all games has dipped to 81.8 and, after being stuck in the 60s last week, CU is averaging 73 points in five Big 12 games.
When its shooting turns frigid, CU must compensate by doing other things well (namely defend, rebound and take the overall intensity to the hair-on-fire stage) - all of which was done in the home win against Oklahoma State before tripping to the badlands.
The Buffs also encounter trouble if they don't get to the free throw line, which they did early, often and successfully against OSU. CU shot 39 free throws in that game, making 34. In the next two games, CU shot 34 combined, getting only nine trips to the line at Nebraska, hitting seven, and 25 at Oklahoma, sinking 16.
The Sooners picked up a portion of the Cornhuskers' blueprint for keeping the Buffs from getting to the rim and ultimately to the foul line. Nebraska "sagged" on CU's guards, primarily Cory Higgins and Alec Burks, double-teaming them every trip inside and limiting the Buffs' already limited post scoring.
"Oklahoma sagged on us, too . . . it's hard to get inside against teams that sag," CU point guard Nate Tomlinson said. "And therefore it's hard to get to the free throw line. We have to make our outside shots, and if we don't do that we struggle."
But in Norman, the Buffs' struggles weren't limited to poor marksmanship. On an afternoon brimming with bounce-back potential after the Nebraska loss, CU might have believed showing up was the only requirement for a 'W.' And that's what disturbed Boyle the most: "Against Nebraska, we really took a step back with our interior defense, which had gotten better . . . against Oklahoma, we didn't do anything well."
On Tuesday (6 p.m., all Coors Events Center doors open at 4:30) comes Kansas, which suffered a rare come-from-ahead home loss Saturday to Texas and dropped from No. 2 to No. 6 in this week's national polls. The defeat snapped KU's 69-game home winning streak, and for the record, the Jayhawks suffer consecutive losses about as frequently as solar eclipses occur. They haven't lost back-to-back games since mid-January of the 2005-06 season (59-55 to Kansas State in Lawrence, 89-86 to Missouri in overtime in Columbia).
That was Jayhawks Coach Bill Self's third season in Lawrence, so he obviously isn't accustomed to anything resembling a losing streak. Fans, he said, "make a big deal over a week's worth of play or a loss and all those things. And they are big deals. But in the big scheme of things, 50 percent of the teams that play every day lose.
"You have to be able to recover from that, and I'm sure Tad will get them to recover from that. I've got to get my guys to recover from that. I never thought our guys would run the table, never even crossed my mind. But you can't let one loss become two, two become three, or three become four . . . that's the whole thing, when momentum's going well you extend it and when it's not you've got to cut it off as quickly as you possibly can. Of course, Tad needs to do that with his club and certainly we need to do with our club here as well."
Last season at the Events Center, minus future Big 12 freshman-of-the-year Burks (mild knee sprain in the previous game), the Buffs took the Jayhawks to overtime before losing 72-66. Mainly using a zone defense, CU held KU to its third-lowest point total (60 in regulation) of the season. Boyle favors man-to-man defense, while former CU Coach Jeff Bzdelik "messed with us in a lot of different defensive schemes and that kind of stuff," Self said.
"Tad is just saying, 'OK we're going to play this way and we're going to get better at it every day.' And they have gotten better. Certainly, he deserves a lot of credit for them kind of changing the mindset."
In last season's game here, CU limited KU to four-of-12 three-pointers in the first half and only one attempt (a miss) in the second half. Last season, the Jayhawks averaged 7.3 treys a game; this season, they're just under that at 6.9.
Self lost guards Sherron Collins and Xavier Henry and center Cole Aldrich, but he still has the large and gifted Morris twins (6-10 Markieff, 6-9 Marcus) and touted freshman point guard Josh Selby on a typically deep and talented KU roster. Tomlinson said of the Morris duo, "They're so versatile . . . one of them is good, two of them is pretty scary. I've been watching them play on TV and they're pretty much unstoppable inside. You just try to do your best to limit their touches and their effectiveness."
In Big 12 games, Marcus Morris leads the conference in scoring (22.5) and rebounding (9.0), while Burks is No. 2 in scoring (21.) and rebounding (8.6). In all games, Markieff Morris is KU's leading rebounder (8.5) and has a couple of teammates - including his brother - among the Big 12's Top 20 board men.
Odd, but despite the size discrepancy, CU is No. 3 in rebounding in conference games (36.4) while KU is No. 7 (34.8). If those numbers get out of whack Tuesday night, it doesn't bode well for the Buffs.
With Boyle clearly bothered by the letdown in Norman, I asked Tomlinson what approach his coach - a 1985 KU grad - has taken with the Buffs over the past two days.
"He's keeping us accountable teammate to teammate," Tomlinson said. "He wants to keep us to a certain standard every game. We played so well early, then the last two games it slipped off. It was a big disappointment. The good thing is, as teammates we understand that."
Added Burks: "(Boyle) just wants us to get back to what we were doing . . . we do the certain things were doing earlier and we'll be all right."
The Buffs will play before their second-consecutive home sellout Tuesday night. Traditionally, KU fans have been as plentiful as CU fans at the Events Center, prompting the "Allen Fieldhouse West" tag from some of the more bombastic Jayhawks.
Said Tomlinson: "It makes you wonder how they get those tickets. We sold out the Oklahoma State game . . . and there weren't too many Oklahoma State fans. But that doesn't really bother us that much. We know it's our home gym and we're undefeated (11-0) here right now. We want to keep it that way."
Boyle wants the same result, but for an additional reason. From his first three Big 12 games, he's gotten an early feel for the fervor his program can produce. If he's talking up accountability among his players, he's also talking about their accountability to the fans.
"We are generating some excitement along the Front Range and I think that's a good thing," he said. "That's going to be a process that's not going to happen overnight, but I think the process has started, so that's a positive sign. We have to do our job, though. I feel like we let our fans down the way we performed the last week after we left home. So we've got to come home and get on the right track and reward them."
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
