Colorado
9-6,0-4Big 12
West Virginia
12-3,3-1Big 12
Buffs Second Half Rally Not Enough Against West Virginia
January 12, 2025 | Men's Basketball
BOULDER – Despite Colorado's second-half resurgence during Sunday afternoon's contest, the Buffaloes could not overcome their early turnover struggles, leading to a 78-70 win by West Virginia..
The Buffs, 9-6 overall and 0-4 in the Big 12, drop their fourth-straight, the program's longest since dropping the final five games of the 2019-20 season. West Virginia improves to 12-3, 3-1 in the conference.
"Well, another disappointing loss," head coach Tad Boyle said. "It's been like that now four games in a row. So I take responsibility for this. I'm the head coach. We let a team that's averaging 62 points a game come in our building and score 78 on us."
Julian Hammond III, coming off a career-high 26 points against UCF, led the Buffaloes with 23 points on 6-for-13 shooting. It was a team effort from CU, with nine different Buffs logging points in the score column.
"It's definitely frustrating losing four games in a row," Hammond said. "We haven't had a four game losing streak in a while, I can't remember last time. I don't even know if it's since I've been here, but obviously it's frustrating, but we try to keep our team together and keep our guys together because we know we have another game on Wednesday. So we got to be ready, we got to be ready for that."
Assane Diop had 15 points while going 3-for-4 from the field. Javon Ruffin chipped in with a season-high seven rebounds and four assists, leading the team in both categories.
Javon Small led West Virginia with 26 points, shooting 4-10 from the three.
The Buffs went 20-for-48 from the floor as a unit, for a 41.7 percent clip. They shot 6-for-19 from three, nailing just one in the second period. Hammond made three of the six three-pointers for Colorado.
Despite an impressive second-half defensive effort, Colorado's ball security issues turned out to be the difference in this one. West Virginia capitalized on Colorado's 11 first-half turnovers, outscoring the Buffs 12-0 on points off turnovers in the first 20 minutes of play.
It led to seven of the eight-man rotation for the Mountaineers to score at least once in the first half.
"We had some silly silly turnovers," Boyle stated. "We had 11 turnovers in the first half. And two illegal screens, two three balls, throwing it out of bounds, one dribble into traffic, it was just silly stuff. I like that we did a much better job in the second half. Only had three turnovers in the second half."
HOW IT HAPPENED
After a quick score from Diop to tip off the game, West Virginia scored 10 unanswered points from Jonathan Powell and Small to give them an early cushion. RJ Smith nailed a three to break up the scoring run for WVU.
Eight CU turnovers within the first eight minutes of the game led to more WVU opportunities, giving them a chance to build a double-digit lead at halftime, 40-29.
Small, WVU's leading scorer, opened the second half with back-to-back-to-back three-pointers, but Hammond kept Colorado on the attack, scoring back-to-back buckets of his own. Andrej Jakimovski had a pair of scores to cut the Mountaineers' lead to single digits.
Some strong defense paired with some West Virginia shooting woes brought the Buffs within four points with 11:06 remaining in the game. Harrison Carrington registered two blocks during the Mountaineers' 1-for-8 shooting run.
The Buffs were able to cut the West Virginia lead to just two points several times in the last eight minutes of the game. Trading free throws and possessions, WVU built the lead back up to five with a few minutes to play.
A Trevor Baskin put-back dunk off a Ruffin missed three-pointer at the 2:22 mark brought CU back within a one-possession game at 66-63. Joseph Yesefu converted back-to-back challenging buckets, including an and-one, to give his team a six-point lead with just a minute left in regulation.
UP NEXT
The Buffs will look to bounce back and play at home Wednesday night to take on the Cincinnati Bearcats at 7 p.m. MT.
