Colorado University Athletics
Colorado
19-9, 11-5
California
23-7, 13-4
| Team | 1 | 2 | F |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 25 | 32 | 57 |
| Colorado | 32 | 38 | 70 |
Brooks: Buffs Bounce Back, Put Bears In Deep Sleep
February 26, 2012 | Men's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER - Catching the Colorado Buffaloes on the rebound can produce a nasty bounce. Ask California, the former Pac-12 Conference co-leader. Smarting from its worst loss of the season three days earlier against Stanford, CU regrouped, refocused and showed up re-energized Sunday afternoon for Senior Day.
Wrong place, wrong time for Cal . . .
The Buffs finished strong and decisively closed out the Bears 70-57 in their final regular-season home game at the sold-out Coors Events Center (11,043). With the win, CU remained in a fourth-place tie with Oregon, which edged Oregon State 74-73 on Sunday, and gave Washington a push past Cal into first place.
With a week of regular-season league play remaining - two road games for the Buffs - UW is at 13-3, Cal at 13-4, Arizona at 12-5 and CU and Oregon at 11-5. UCLA is fifth at 9-7. The Buffs face the Ducks Thursday night in Eugene. The top four regular-season finishers receive first-round byes in the Pac-12 postseason tournament, which begins March 7 in Los Angeles.
"Our guys have talked about it (and) we want one of those top four seeds," CU coach Tad Boyle said. "But I think the Pac-12 tournament is setting up to be anybody's game."
But that's as far as Boyle will take "bracketology" or postseason chatter of any kind. Thursday night's unexpected, inexplicable 24-point smackdown by Stanford perhaps put Boyle and the Buffs on notice about living out of the moment, looking too far into the future.
"After Thursday's game, I'm done predicting what this team is going to do," Boyle said. "I only know what (happens in practice) . . . Friday and Saturday we had very intense, spirited practices. Our guys were genuinely disappointed. With that, I'm not surprised with what we did (Sunday). I still don't know how to explain Thursday, though."
No further explanation needed. The Buffs boldly pushed out of their Cardinal funk with a final 14-6 run to dispatch the Bears and win their 19th game of the season. A victory either on Thursday at Oregon or Saturday at Oregon State would make Boyle the first CU coach to win 20 games in back-to-back seasons and his second Buffs team the first to reach that plateau in consecutive years.
Cal, which came to Boulder on a six-game winning streak and had beaten the Buffs 57-50 last month in Berkeley, had been 23-0 when outshooting its opponent. The Buffs outshot the Bears 43.5 percent from the field to 38. Boyle wants his defense to hold teams to 41 percent from the field, so three ticks below that constituted a pleasant Sunday afternoon for Boyle.
Not so for veteran Cal coach Mike Montgomery. "The one thing Colorado does is they will not let you get to the basket; they really load up at the basket," he said. "So, what we worked on was to try and get there (inside) and find the open guy (outside). I wouldn't say we were highly successful in that."
The Buffs, said Boyle, defended the perimeter better than efficiently, with freshman Spencer Dinwiddie - "He's become a lock-down guy" - locking in on Jorge Guitterez (no points) and senior Nate Tomlinson making Allen Crabbe work for his 16 points.
Said Boyle: "All of our guys - Carlon (Brown), 'Ski' (Askia Booker), Nate and Spencer - did great jobs on the perimeter . . . I thought our perimeter defense was terrific."
CU's perimeter offense - in truth, its offense overall - was markedly improved over the previous game, when the Buffs shot a season-worst 29.6 percent. Three Buffs - Dinwiddie and senior Austin Dufault with 15 each, Tomlinson with 11 - reached double figures. Booker was one point shy and Andre Roberson, who collected 15 rebounds, finished with eight points.
The Buffs outscored the Bears 34-18 in the paint, 15-4 in bench production and outrebounded them 39-30. And CU committed only five turnovers - a season low. The Buffs committed just six against the Cardinal, but that didn't compensate for the ugliness elsewhere.
"We looked bad on Thursday night," Tomlinson said. "It's just fitting that we win against the best team in the league (Sunday). It shows how tough we are as a group."
The Buffs led by as many as 10 points (30-20) in the first half but had to settle for a 32-25 advantage at halftime. The Bears managed one short-lived lead and were never allowed to get into an offensive rhythm by a Buffs defense that in no way resembled the one that was shredded by Stanford.
After CU hit its first two shots and went up 5-0, Cal closed the gap and finally edged in front 12-11 on a jumper by Crabbe with 11:16 left before the break. But the Buffs reclaimed the lead (13-12) on a short jumper by Booker and never trailed again.
When Roberson buried a three-pointer from the right wing for a 20-15 lead, CU showed signs of pulling away. The Buffs outscored the Bears 10-5 over the next 6 minutes and went ahead 30-20 on one of two free throws by Tomlinson with 2:24 left before the break.
But Cal closed with a 5-2 run and CU had to settle for its seven-point halftime advantage. The Bears needed an efficient second-half start and a quick run, but the Buffs didn't allow it. They restored their 10-point lead (43-33) on a scoop layup by Dufault and increased it by a point (46-35) just under 3 minutes later on a baseline drive by Tomlinson.
Montgomery called a timeout with 12:31 remaining, knowing the Bears needed to make a move soon. Cal crept to 55-49 on a three-pointer from the left wing by Justin Cobbs (15 points, 13 in the second half) with 7:44 to play, then to 56-51 on a Cobbs layup a minute later.
Were the Bears awakening? Not completely.
A nice bounce pass from Tomlinson to Booker for a layup in transition pushed the Buffs ahead 58-51 and elicited a roar from the Events Center crowd. It grew louder after a Bears turnover on their next possession, and louder still when Dufault worked free for a layup and a 60-51 lead with 3:51 remaining.
"'Ski's' layup in transition got the crowd going, and kind of broke their backs," Boyle said.
Half a minute later, when Cal switched to a zone, Dinwiddie's three-ball from the left corner pushed CU ahead again by 10 (63-53) and the Buffs were in command. Dufault tightened the noose with a foul-line jumper as the shot clock nudged zero, and Dinwiddie's pair of free throws at 1:46 opened CU's biggest lead to that point - 67-53.
Dufault called Dinwiddie's trey "huge . . . they were making a run, but I think that's one of the plays that sealed it for us. For a freshman he has so much confidence about himself."
When Tomlinson banked in a trey from the deep right corner - an atypical but fitting senior shot on Senior Day - CU was ahead 70-55 and the celebration had genuine reason to begin.
Tomlinson, Dufault and Brown (fourth senior Trey Eckloff is expected to return from mononucleosis next week) were determined not to submit another clunker like Thursday night's - "Especially on Senior Night and the last time to play in front of these fans," Dufault said. "I think it's fitting the way it went . . . we've had an up and down career, but I think we've been pretty resilient. Our main focus was to close it out the right way at home."
And that's what happened, said Boyle: "To me, that's what Senior Day is supposed to be about - the energy and the effort. We made plays on offense and defense . . . we rebounded, defended and we did it. Our seniors weren't going to let us lose it."
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
