Colorado University Athletics
Colorado
12-4, 1-0
Missouri
14-2, 0-1
Burks' 36 Leads Buffs To Win Over No. 9/8 Tigers
January 08, 2011 | Men's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER - Winning Big 12 Conference openers hasn't been the easiest assignment for the Colorado men's basketball team. Making a bold statement in them has been even more difficult.
But on Saturday at the Coors Events Center, things changed. Oh, how they changed.
Unranked, unsung CU got a career-best 36 points from sophomore Alec Burks and turned buzzer-to-buzzer aggressor, turning the tables on No. 8 Missouri. Burks and the Buffaloes stunned the Tigers, 89-76, giving CU its first win against a Top 10 team since Feb. 4, 2003, when the Buffs defeated No. 3 Texas 93-80 at the Events Center. The Buffs had lost 19 consecutive games to opponents ranked in the Top 10 in either national poll.
CU snapped a 13-game losing streak in conference openers, winning for the first time in a Big 12 first game since the league's inaugural year in 1997. So the Buffs, headed to the Pac-12 Conference next season, will exit the Big 12 with bookend wins in league openers - hardly worthy of a signpost on the national hoops landscape, but nevertheless something to cheer for a program on the road to reestablishing itself.
"It was a statement game for us . . . we wanted to show that we're a different team from last year and can play with anybody in the Big 12," said the gifted Burks, a Grandview, Mo., native who received maybe a cursory recruiting look from his home state university.
But Mizzou gave him more than a fleeting glance Saturday - when the Tigers (14-2) could keep up with him. In more ways than MU could count, Burks added to a fast-growing personal highlight reel that might be a mixed blessing for first-year coach Tad Boyle.
"He took it to another level offensively," Boyle said. "I think we know what he can do."
But Burks, the league's freshman-of-the-year last season, continued to earn Boyle's respect with his team play: "He's so talented offensively, he feels like he can make a play every time he has the ball. When the guy is like that - and for the sake of the team he gives it up - you have to respect that."
The 6-foot-6 Burks also chipped in eight rebounds, two assists and a steal. He hit all three of his three-point attempts and was 9-of-11 from the free throw line. He said his approach to Saturday's game was the same as any other: "I tried to do everything aggressive . . . that was nothing new; it's the same thing every game."
Boyle also liked all of his players' overall moxie, especially the "statement game" part. He quickly picked up on the theme when asked what that statement might be. It is, he said, "When you come in here, you'd better be ready to play. That's a top 10 team, and when you beat one, it wakes some people up. We want to be the new Colorado and have a chance to win every time we step on the (CEC) floor or go on the road."
Boyle, Northern Colorado's head coach a season ago after assistant stints at Wichita State, Jacksonville State and Oregon, wasn't prepared to give the win a ranking on his scale of large career victories.
"I haven't thought about that . . . I'm just happy for our players," he said. "I just want our guys to believe we can play with any team in the country. Obviously, it was against a Top 10 team, but I'm into wins for the program."
Senior Cory Higgins, however, called the victory "the biggest win since I've been here. It's my best memory so far, with hopefully many more to come. It felt great to execute the game plan and have it show up on the scoreboard."
With Burks, Higgins (18) was one of four CU players in double figures. Levi Knutson added 13 and Austin Dufault 12. Higgins also collected a game-best 10 rebounds, tying a career-high, as the Buffs out-boarded the Tigers 47-33. It was MU's biggest board discrepancy of the season.
"We did the little things right," said the fast-improving Dufault, who contributed seven rebounds. "When a shot was up in the air, everyone was getting on a body. Once that thing came off the rim, everybody attacked it. We had a lot of team rebounds, a lot of gang rebounds."
And there was this telling statistic: CU committed just 10 turnovers (two in the first half) in successfully handling Mizzou's full- and half-court pressure. The Tigers had been forcing an average of 20 turnovers a game. Taking care of the ball, the rebounding differential and knowing when to attack the Tigers and when to hold up were cited by Boyle as keys to the win.
"We've got to make them pay for pressing, and I think we did a great job of that," Higgins said. "Maybe two years ago, when it was a real young team (were the Buffs intimidated by the Tigers pressure). Now, it's two years down the road and nobody has a 'deer in the headlights' look. Pretty much everybody has seen it all."
The Buffs, noted Tigers Coach Mike Anderson, "did a good job of attacking. We didn't do a good job defensively and I think that showed early on."
Boyle said his players "toughed it out," adding that from a coaching perspective, "The whole key to our game plan was for our players to make decisions when we broke the press - when do we attack and when do we pull it back. If we get the opportunities to score, you better take them when you have them."
Losers of eight consecutive games to the Tigers before Saturday, the Buffs missed their first three shots, but that was in no way indicative of how they would finish the first half or the game. They wound up shooting 47.8 percent (33-of-69) from the field while holding the Tigers to 40.6 percent (28-of-69).
Trailing 4-0, CU caught up on a pair of baskets by Dufault and finally took its first lead (16-15) on an Andre Roberson tip in with 14:26 left before intermission. He entered the game at the 16:17 mark, and his hustle paid off immediately. On the MU possession before his tip, he blocked a shot then raced to the other end to get himself in position for the tap-in.
That hustle was emblematic of how the Buffs opened and closed - and Anderson noticed: "They wanted it more than we did. That's the bottom line - they wanted it more."
CU expanded its first-half lead to nine points (29-20) before Marcus Denmon, Mizzou's leading scorer (17.2), pushed the Tigers on a 12-2 run by scoring seven of those points. His three-pointer with 4:32 before the break put MU up 32-31.
But the Buffs had an answer - a bold one.
After Denmon's trey, CU closed the half with a 15-2 run and went to the locker room cradling a 46-34 advantage - their largest of the afternoon to that point. Burks contributed five points in the surge, giving him a career-best 20 for the half - two more than he scored in the first 20 minutes against Alcorn State earlier this season.
The Buffs maintained their intensity to open the second half, and when Burks canned a pair of free throws 3:42 in, they increased their lead to 56-40 - their largest until Knutson scored seven consecutive points to put CU up 65-47 with 12:36 to play.
At that point, the Buffs could be certain the Tigers would ramp up their pressure. They did, mounting an 11-4 run that pulled them within 11 (69-58) with 8:24 remaining. MU guard Michael Dixon keyed that spurt, and minutes later when he hit four consecutive free throws the Tigers had cut the Buffs' lead to single figures (71-62).
CU pushed back in front 75-62 on baskets by Higgins and Burks, but after Mizzou had pulled to 75-68, it took a nearly miraculous catch-turn-and-shoot jumper by Burks with one second left on the shot clock for CU to restore its 10-point lead.
Said Burks of the shot: "I just threw it up and it happened to go in . . . sometimes it's your day and sometimes it's not."
But, of course, Mizzou wasn't ready to roll over.
Preceding the game, Boyle had written three words on the chalkboard in his team's dressing room: Focus, Confidence, Execution. The Buffs delivered all three. "Our guys did it in both halves, which you have to do," he said. "We knew Missouri was going to make some runs, but we just tried to limit those as best we could."
After the Tigers crept to 79-72 on a three-point play by Denmon, the Buffs got a technical free throw and a top-of-the-key jumper from Burks, then a layup by Marcus Relphorde to lead again by a dozen (84-72).
Denmon, the recipient of the 'T,' apparently was upset when scrapping for a loose ball that was awarded to the Buffs after a timeout was called by the CU bench. Anderson called the technical foul "a bad technical, that's the bottom line."
Anderson, who watched his team lose for the first time in 10 games, also said when CU closed the first half with what would be a critical 15-2 run, "we lost our composure there a little bit."
The Buffs kept theirs throughout, and finally, in their final Big 12 opener, they opened with a bang.
"I don't know where to start," Boyle said to open his postgame news conference, "but I'll say this: today at the Coors Events Center is great and how we want Saturdays to be in January and February for years to come. We want this to be an event where our fans can get excited, our players can get ready to play . . . I'm really proud of our guys, really proud."
On Day 1 of his first (and last) Big 12 season, Boyle's guys gave him reason to be proud, very proud indeed.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
