Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Jake Mauff at Jacob.Mauff@Colorado.edu
Finding gold. Seeing Bigfoot. Scoring zero points in a quarter. These are all rare things. But one of those things happened Friday night for the University of Colorado women’s basketball team. The first quarter ended in a 14-all tie between Colorado and California. The second quarter ended, and the Buffs still had 14 points.
It was going to be a challenge to take down No. 21 California Golden Bears, but the scoreless second quarter took away almost any hope of the Buffs pulling off the upset, losing 64-35. Incredibly, Colorado (5-9) went 18:47 without scoring a single point, spanning the second and third quarters. For a good chunk of the second, the only points came from a single free throw. They didn’t make a field goal.
It was obvious that the Buffs missed senior center Jamee Swan, who did not play due to injury. As the team’s leading scorer, she certainly could have helped on offense.
Defense was the complete opposite for the Buffaloes. California shot 43.3 percent on 60 shots. They didn’t convert a three. This helped Colorado stay in the game at the half, even though it didn’t score in the second quarter.
““We did amazing tonight defensively,” Freshman forward Makenzie Ellis said. “Everyone was where they needed to be and we communicated well. We just had a great help defense tonight.
It was a bad shooting night for Colorado. The Buffaloes were 12-of-47 from the field. This included 4-of-18 from three, and they also went 7-of-12 from the free throw line. Their first free-throw attempt didn’t come until there was 2:24 left in the third quarter.
Only one Colorado player scored in double digits. Freshman guard Kennedy Leonard scored 12, and made five of her 14 shot attempts. Leonard also had four turnovers on the night.
The Buffs struggled as a whole with turnover problems. After the first quarter, the game was tied at 14. Colorado had five turnovers to Cal’s seven. From there, Colorado went on to turn the ball over 20 more times, while only forcing 10 takeaways. This was when the game got out of the Buffs’ grasp.
“I think we had five or six straight possessions with turnovers in that second quarter,” Head Coach Linda Lappe said. “We just were stagnant; we weren’t moving and we weren’t ready to shoot.”
Colorado only had eight assists in the game. California had 14, with 17 turnovers. This isn’t winning the assist-to-turnover ratio for the Golden Bears, but it was a lot better than Colorado’s.
Again, the Buffs fouled a lot. Colorado committed 24 personal fouls, as opposed to 11 for the Golden Bears. Two players had four fouls for Colorado, and three players had three.
Bears freshman center Kristine Anigwe terrorized Colorado all night. She led the Golden Bears in points, rebounds, and blocks, with 20, 13, and two, respectively, while also tying for the most assists with 4. Anigwe is the reigning Pac-12 Freshman player of the week, and it’s easy to understand why she has that honor. She has won the award six-out-of-eight weeks this season.
Colorado will look to end their four game losing streak when they travel to No. 9 Stanford (12-3) this Saturday. Tip-off is scheduled for 1 p.m. MST.
