Contact CU Independent Assistant Sports Editor Alissa Noe at alissa.noe@colorado.edu and follow her on Twitter @crazysportgirl1.
If ever there was a game to commit 18 turnovers and still run away with a large-margin victory, it would be Colorado’s home win against Northern Colorado on Sunday afternoon, 82-52.
“Anytime you win by that kind of margin at home, you feel pretty good about things, but a little bit of the same ol’ for us,” head coach Tad Boyle said. “I really challenged our guys before the game defensively to hit our numbers, which we did tonight.”
Throughout the first half, the Buffaloes shined from the three-point range as they made six of 13, and played exceptionally overall on both offense and defense.
But it was a tale of two halves for this Colorado team.
In the second half, they slowed their roll a bit as turnovers and poorer shooting plagued them. For the game, the Buffs committed 18 total turnovers, 12 of which came in the final half of play. They also shot about 11 percent worse than they did in the first half, whereas the Bears shot 10 percent better, though that’s not saying much.
Senior forward Josh Scott led the team with 18 points and eight rebounds, with sophomore guard George King trailing behind him with 13 points. Senior forward Wes Gordon set the pace for the team defensively as he grabbed 15 rebounds, 12 of which were on the defensive glass.
“I can affect the game in more ways than just scoring, so just focus on different aspects of the game,” Gordon said. “We don’t really have trouble scoring too much, so it’s not that big of a deal.”
For the night, the Buffs shot 48.1 percent from the field (26-54) and 43.5 percent from deep (10-23). On the other side of the ball, the Bears shot 32.3 percent from the field (20-63) and 14.3 percent (1-7) from the three-point range.
“I thought it was good,” Scott said of the team’s performance. “I think any time you win by 30, it’s big time. I think we accomplished all of our defensive goals. Offensively, we shot the ball really well. I think the only thing we didn’t really do a good job of was taking care of the ball in the second half.”
The first few minutes of Sunday’s home matchup got off to a slow start, with neither team getting on the board two minutes in. But it didn’t take long for the Buffaloes to find their wild wings and soar from downtown.
Threes seemed to dominate the first 10 minutes of play for the Buffaloes, who kept burying the Bears more with every shot they made from deep. UNC didn’t stand a chance against the fiery Buffalo offense.
Throughout the first half, the Bears didn’t put up much of a fight against their competitors. The Buffs got on the board first and never got close to losing the lead from there on out. They gained their biggest lead of the half as they closed it out by 27 points, 46-19.
“I think it’s critical that you come out, you don’t give them any hope,” Boyle said. “You’ve got to punch them in the mouth, so to speak, and I thought we did that. The only way you extend leads is you got to score but you also got to get stops.”
For the half, the Buffs shot an impressive 53.6 percent from the field (15-28) and were even more impressive from the three-point range at 46.2 percent (6-13). Scott, per usual, led Colorado with 11 points in the first half.
The Bears, however, did not shoot well by any means, which was a testament to Colorado’s tight defense. They only made 27.3 percent of their shot attempts (9-33) and did not make either of their three-point attempts. Little man Jordan Wilson, who stands at 5-foot-7, led the Bears with eight points to start off the first 20 minutes of play.
Not much changed in the second half.
In the opening minutes, the Buffaloes extended their lead to 31, 50-19, before taking their feet off the gas a little to let UNC chip away at the lead ever so slightly.
Not that it really mattered much in the end.
Even with Colorado’s abysmal ball handling and overall offensive performance in the second half, the Bears had no shot of redemption after the hole they dug themselves into during the first half.
By the end of the matchup, the Buffs ran away with their fifth straight victory, 82-52. They return to their home floor on Wednesday, Dec. 2 when they face Fort Lewis College.
“This team doesn’t have that killer instinct that we need to have quite yet,” Boyle said of his team’s second half defensive effort. “And again, at this stage in the season, we’ve got to stay hungry and can’t be satisfied with where we are.”
