The CU basketball team huddles up before the opening tip against Lipscomb on Nov 30. (Matt Sisneros/CU Independent)

There was little joy after the final buzzer of Colorado’s game against Lipscomb in the subdued, half-empty Coors Event Center Sunday afternoon.

Relief and exhaustion replaced the jubilation of victory. Though the game is technically a triumph for Colorado — by a final margin of 84-75 — the Buffs didn’t win as much as they survived.

Colorado had not allowed 60 points in a game this season. Lipscomb eclipsed that with six minutes to play. The Buffs had held opponents to 34 percent shooting. Lipscomb hit an even 40 percent of their shots. Colorado had allowed just 25 percent three-point shooting, and Lipscomb entered the game shooting only 30 percent as a team from deep. Sunday, the Bisons hit 39 percent of their threes, including eight threes in the second half.

Colorado, in short, played the worst defensive game of its season against a school whose only wins have come against Division-III programs and whose entire student body would fill less than half of the Coors Events Center.

The game was not always so tight — the Buffs opened a 12-2 lead seven minutes in. They feasted in the paint against the undersized Bisons. Lipscomb coach Casey Alexander switched his team between 2-3 and 1-3-1 zone defenses to little effect.

“I have confidence that if someone zones up for 40 minutes we should be licking our chops,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle said. “Usually if a team is zoning you, unless you’re Syracuse or the old Temple teams, they can’t guard you in man to man.”

Alexander also went deep into his bench early; he trotted out seldom-used gargantuan center Chad Lang to provide some semblance of interior defense. But the 6-foot-11, 310-pound graduate student could do little more than flail and foul as Colorado junior forward Josh Scott eviscerated the Lipscomb front line.

Scott was unstoppable after quiet games against Wyoming and Air Force earlier this season. He set career highs in points and assists and his stat line — 29 points, 13 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks — belies his impact on the game, if that is possible. Scott was a gravitational force on the court — he attracted two, three, even four defenders at times. But it shouldn’t take the best performance of your best player’s career to beat Lipscomb.

“It was exciting as well as disappointing for this game,” Scott said.

The Buffs raced out to a big first-half lead behind Scott and senior guard Askia Booker. Booker broke out of the most protracted slump of his career with 18 points on 6-of-13 shooting — each easily a season-high. He also led Colorado with 7 assists and was especially effective on dump-off passes in the paint. The Buffs were more generous as a team Sunday, too. Colorado’s 20 assists were its most in exactly one year, and it had a positive assist-to-turnover ratio for just the second time this season.

“I scored a lot of points off of assists tonight, and it’s fun to play that way,” Scott said.

Offense wasn’t Colorado’s problem, though. The Buffs opened a 44-20 lead with 3:48 left in the first half, but then they started slipping. It was almost too little to notice at first. Then Lipscomb sophomore guard Josh Williams hit a three. Senior forward Martin Smith converted a three-point play. Sophomore forward Brett Wishon nailed one from deep. At halftime, the Bison had cut Colorado’s lead to 14.

Lipscomb stormed into the second half.

Freshman guard Nathan Moran — 5-foot-9, 150 pounds, noticeably slower than the Buffs who guarded him — left the locker room hot and never cooled off. He scored 17 points and hit five three-pointers. The Bisons shot 50 percent from deep as a team in the second half. Boyle called the three-point shot “a great equalizer” after the game, and it nearly leveled the field Sunday.

Lipscomb first cut Colorado’s lead to 10 points on a Williams layup with 8:44 left. He stroked a three barely a minute later, and the deficit was seven. The Buffs pushed the lead back to 11, but Moran made back-to-back threes — both off the dribble and both heavily contested — that brought it back to single digits. Colorado sophomore forward Xavier Johnson made two free throws but fouled Smith on a three on the next possession. Smith made all three free throws, and the Buffs led by only six points with a minute and a half left.

The Bisons never got closer. Booker and junior guard Xavier Talton gave Colorado a 10-point lead with 30 seconds left. But six points was too close.

“We have a tendency sometimes, especially when you play fast and want a high-possession game, to get into the trading baskets mode,” Boyle said. “I felt that we fell into that mode at the end of the first half and really the entire second half, and you can’t close anyone out that way”

Booker was more frank.

“If we can’t finish out games against teams like Air Force and Lipscomb, what happens when we play against UCLA or Arizona?” Booker said.

Forget UCLA and Arizona — Colorado faces a stiff enough challenge from the University of San Francisco, which visits the Coors Event Center on Wednesday. The Dons, known mostly as Bill Russell’s alma mater, play faster than any Division-I team. That’s the Buffs’ game, too, but also an easy team to fall into the basket-trading trap against. For now, though, Colorado regroups, more relieved than elated.

But the thought must linger in the Buffs’ minds — if they can’t finish against a team like Lipscomb, what happens when they play San Francisco?

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Tommy Wood at thomas.c.wood@colorado.edu.