Colorado University Athletics
Colorado
9-4
North Dakota
2-11
Buffs Wobble Past Fighting Sioux, Eye Big 12
January 04, 2011 | Women's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER - Ready or not, Big 12 Conference play begins this weekend for the Colorado women's basketball team. And in a 67-56 win Tuesday night against North Dakota, CU flirted with both ends of a scary spectrum - ready at times, appearing not even close at others.
No matter; the preview is over.
The Buffaloes play Saturday at No. 16 Texas A&M, taking a 9-4 non-conference record into their final Big 12 season. The Fighting Sioux, the preseason pick to win the Great West Conference, lost for the 10th time in 11 games and fell to 2-11.
But the Buffs struggled against a struggling team far too often to please first-year coach Linda Lappe.
"Bottom line, a win's a win," she said. "We're happy to start off 2011 in the right way . . . but we obviously didn't play very well; we didn't play nearly as well as we're going to have to from here on out to compete in the Big 12."
Not surprisingly, her players agreed.
"We're all disappointed in the way we played," said sophomore Meagan Malcolm-Peck. "I don't think we came in and executed or had as much intensity and focus as we needed . . . we played lackadaisical I think."
Lappe said she and her staff noticed a lack of sharpness and focus at Tuesday morning's shoot-around, but she declined to pin that on the last non-conference opponent with Big 12 play looming.
"You can't expect to turn on the switch and not be lackadaisical," Lappe said. "We've got to come into every game with an extreme amount of focus and determination. It's something that from here on out we can't have. Â And we can't have 27 turnovers again for the entire year."
That number tied a season-high (CU had the same total against Evansville, but won 55-53) and came at a time when Lappe thought the number of errors might be on the way down. After committing 24 and 22 in a pair of losses in the Women of Troy Tournament, the Buffs kept their turnover total to 15 in last week's 75-52 rout of Colgate.
But in their second consecutive game at the Coors Events Center, the dubious number climbed again.
"A win is a win," said freshman guard Brittany Wilson, who made her first start. "But 27 turnovers - we can't have that. As a team, we have to pick it up and play 40 minutes."
Replacing sophomore Meagan Malcolm-Peck in the lineup, Wilson contributed 15 points, including a career-best four three-pointers. One was a 30-footer to close the first half. She also made a career-high four steals.
Wilson's practice effort over the past "three or four weeks" earned her the start, Lappe said. But Lappe also was pleased with Malcolm-Peck coming off the bench to record her second career double-double (11 points, 10 rebounds). She scored all of her points and collected seven of her boards in the second half.
"Meagan did a great job coming off the bench," Lappe said. "She let the game come to her and didn't let not starting affect her."
Malcolm-Peck called not starting no big worry: "It doesn't matter; I just do whatever I can do."
CU finally put away North Dakota with a 15-0 run midway through the second half. Senior Brittany Spears and Malcolm-Peck accounted for 13 of those 15 points, with Spears hitting a pair of three-pointers and Malcom-Peck knocking down one trey and adding another pair of baskets.
Spears (21) and Malcolm-Peck (11) were two of four Buffs in double-figures. The others were Brittany Wilson (15) and sophomore Chucky Jeffery (11). Spears reached 20 points for the seventh time this season and 36th time in her career.
The Buffs led 41-26 at the half, but it took a 30-foot buzzer-beater by Brittany Wilson to account for that 15-point margin. Otherwise, CU's first-half finish wasn't of the variety that would leave Lappe particularly happy.
Her team had its first-half highlights:
- It never trailed and went ahead by as many 18 on another Brittany Wilson trey at the 8:10 mark.
- It held the Fighting Sioux to six points for almost 7 minutes and allowed baskets on back-to-back possessions only once for almost 9 minutes.
- It limited the visitors to 35.7 percent shooting from the field in the first 20 minutes and forced a dozen turnovers.
But there was also a bundle of Buffs blunders - not what Lappe wanted in the way of a final Big 12 tune-up:
- They committed one more first-half turnover (13) than the Fighting Sioux and finished with 27 - one more than North Dakota.
- They allowed their 18-point lead to dwindle to a dozen on the next-to-last possession of the half and were threatening to cut it to 10, maybe 9, before a turnover and Brittany Wilson's long trey.
- They had six steals - but the Fighting Sioux had eight. CU finished with 11, North Dakota 18.
Can you say better ball security for the Buffs? Lappe could, and she also could say pass the ball with more authority: "Our passes are very, very soft. We don't have any zip . . . we telegraph, we get tunnel vision . . . . Sometimes we get tentative; we just have to be confident in our passing."
The second half opened with a CU turnover and a three-pointer by Mallory Youngblut, cutting the Buffs' advantage to 12 (41-29). Youngblut, a senior co-captain who finished with 19, then scored her team's next five points as North Dakota closed to within 44-34.
Shortly thereafter, CU launched its 15-0 run and North Dakota temporarily was on the ropes. But fight remained in the Fighting Sioux; they pulled to 67-56 on another trey by Youngblut in the final 1:10 - cutting what had been a 25-point deficit to 11.
"I thought we battled back, we kept working the whole game," North Dakota Coach Gene Roebuck said. "We came back after being down by 25, came back and made a game of it, made them work. That is basically what we wanted to accomplish, the fact that we played 40 minutes of hard basketball."
By their admission, the Buffs didn't. When it was done, they had scored four points - a free throw by Jeffery and Brittany Wilson's final trey - in the last 10:40.
Ready or not, it's on to College Station, Texas.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
