Colorado
4-1,0-0Pac-12
Air Force
3-1,0-0Mountain West
Buffs Outlast Air Force, 71-63
November 19, 2022 | Women's Basketball
Sherrod, Wetta Lead Buffaloes to Fourth Win In Five Games
BOULDER — Jaylyn Sherrod and Kindyll Wetta each scored 15 points to lead the Colorado Buffaloes women's basketball team to hard-fought 71-63 win over the Air Force Academy Falcons here in a Saturday afternoon matinee.
In four previous visits here, Air Force left here on average with nearly 31-point losses. But that wasn't the case here Saturday, as the upstart Falcons were tough to handle from the get-go, forcing CU to rally from an early 8-point deficit, a margin the Buffs didn't match until the final score.
The win prevented a potential first 4-0 start in 17 seasons for the Zoomies.
Colorado (4-1) didn't take the lead for good until there was 8:11 remaining in the game, and after going up by five, 55-50, with 6:19 to go, saw the Falcons (3-1) pull back to within one (55-54) and then down by two three times before closing the game on a 6-0 run.
"Wow. I told the team right after shoot around and we reiterated it here, anytime you play the Air Force Academy, (coach) Chris Gobrecht does an incredible job with her teams," CU head coach JR Payne said. "They are ultimately one of the toughest, most resilient, sort of hardnosed teams that we play all year and this afternoon was certainly no different. We expected a dogfight and we got one, just proud of how we responded in the second half.
"I thought we picked up our tenacity and confidence and aggressiveness in the second half," she continued. "Which I think was the key to us being able to play better basketball. So proud of how we responded and certainly again, a lot of things that we can continue to grow in."
Dasha Macmillan's three-pointer had pulled AFA to 65-63 with 1:17 on the clock. The Buffs used most of the 30-second clock with Quay Miller scoring on a layup with 49 seconds left. Sherrod then stole a pass from Jo Huntimer and was fouled by Macmillan and made both foul shots to pad the CU edge to 69-63. Madison Smith missed a three-point t ry and Tayanna Jones sank to free throws to seal the win.
Colorado had spotted Air Force an early 10-2 lead, turning the ball over three times in its first seven possessions while making just one of its first five field goal tries. But Frida Formann scored CU's first seven points and Tameiya Sadler the last five in quarter – sandwiched around a Jaylyn Sherrod free throw that brought the Buffaloes back to within one, 14-13, at the end of the first quarter.
Jones put back her own miss on CU's first possession of the second quarter, giving the Buffs their first lead at 15-14. That was the first of six lead changes in the quarter until Huntimer made a three-pointer with 2:42 left in the first half to put Air Force back on top, 25-23. It was the front end of a 7-2 Falcon run to close the half that gave the Academy a 29-25 lead at intermission.
Huntimer had five steals in the first half and Air Force as a team had 11, as the Buffaloes committed 13 turnovers in the first 20 minutes as it appeared they were still dragging a bit following a Wednesday loss at Texas Tech. The Falcons built the lead back up to five, 34-29, two minutes into the third quarter before Colorado went on an 11-2 run to take a 40-36 advantage. Wetta scored four points in the spree, in which four Buffs overall contributed points.
Wetta then hit four free throws that gave CU its big lead of the first 30 minutes, 44-39, with 2:25 left in the third. But the Buffaloes still could not shake the Falcons, who trimmed the lead to 47-45 at the end of the period, thanks to a pair of three-pointers from Smith.
Air Force regained the lead for the final time, 50-49, by scoring the first five points in the fourth quarter, the first two from Kamri Heath, who led the Falcons with 16 points, and the last on a three by Smith, who scored 15 on the afternoon. Sherrod was then called for an offensive foul, but turned right around and made a steal, fed the ball to Miller whose driving layup put CU up for good.
Miller and Formann each added 10 points for the Buffaloes, who almost had six in double figures as Jones and Sadler each scored nine. Colorado flipped the turnover stat in the second half, forcing 13, a dozen of which came on steals. Air Force came into the game 12th nationally in turnover margin at plus-12 per game, but committed just three fewer than CU in the end.
UP NEXT: Colorado will travel to Knoxville to take on No. 11 Tennessee in a 5:00 p.m. game this Friday; the game will be televised on the SEC Network. The Lady Vols (2-2) opened the year ranked fifth, but have since suffered losses to No. 14 Ohio State and No. 12 Indiana; Tennessee beat Rutgers, 94-54, in the first round of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas, and will play UCLA on Sunday and one more game in the event before hosting CU.
NOTES: Colorado now leads the all-time series by an 8-0 count (5-0 in Boulder); the Buffaloes have won all five games with the Falcons under Payne, whom in her seventh season at CU is nearing the century mark in wins (98-85). She is now 199-198 in 13 seasons overall in the collegiate ranks … CU was coming off a frustrating 86-85 loss at Texas Tech on Wednesday in its third and final game of the Women's Preseason NIT, a game in which the Buffaloes led most of the way but were called for 34 fouls, with three players fouling out and three others tagged four times; the Buffs weren't called for their first foul Saturday until nearly 14 minutes in and had just 13; CU was whistled for one every 80 seconds against the Red Raiders … Colorado improved to 13-1 on games played on November 19 (11-0 at home) … The first six games in the series had seen CU win each by at least 21 points; CU won last year in Colorado Springs, 58-53.
Additional Quotes
Coach JR Payne
ON GETTING BETTER IN CRUNCH TIME—"We have a team full of players that want to be coached and want to learn and they want to know the areas that they can be better and we have a coaching staff that also wants to know the areas that we can be better. So when we have a tough loss like that at Texas Tech, we do a really deep dive into what we could have done better. Where do we need to improve? Our team was very responsive to that coaching and I thought we improved. We take losses as a learning lessons and try to be better and I think we were."
ON FOULING LESS—"We did talk a lot about making in-game adjustments. If something's being called really tight, we have to adjust. We want to learn, we want to be better. We did a good job of that, making that adjustment and making sure we weren't committing silly fouls like two touches on a ball handler and things like that. So that was a big area that we wanted to grow and we did."
ON THE UPCOMING GAME AGAINST TENNESSEE—"We're super excited for the opportunity. I'm actually from Tennessee and I have a lot of family there but I've never been to Pat Summitt court before, so I'm very excited for that opportunity. We don't know anything about them other than they're probably pretty good. So coaches will dive into the scout while these guys rest for a couple days, and we'll be very excited for that game."
Kindyll Wetta
ON WHAT CHANGED IN THE SECOND HALF—"I would say just our defensive effort. We really pride ourselves on being a defensive team, so picking that up immediately in the second half I think really turned the game around."
ON THE MESSAGE AT HALFTIME—"I think it was just settle down. They do a really good job of pressuring everywhere, the wings, the ball. That really sped us up in the first half. Just taking a breath, coming down, and doing what we needed to do."
ON THE REASON THE OFFENSE IMPROVED IN THE SECOND HALF—"Starts with defense. Like I said before, when we're playing up top and, in the zone, together, we put an enormous amount of pressure and I think we feed off of each other's energy, and the defense turns offense."
Tayanna Jones
REASONING BEHIND SECOND HALF IMPROVEMENTS—"I think it was like you said earlier, Texas Tech made us mad a little bit so I think we all just as a collective tried to finish the game. I know we kept saying finish the game and handle what we need to handle. That's what we tried to do."
