Contact CU Independent Men’s Basketball Beat Writer Alissa Noe at alissa.noe@colorado.edu
At the beginning of the week, eight teams in the Pac-12 were competing for first place in conference play, making Colorado’s last two home games vital for survival in its run to March Madness. After two successful home games in week 12 of the regular season, the Buffs are riding high and staying in the conversation.
Everybody in the Pac-12 save for Washington State, Arizona State, Oregon State and Stanford stayed within one game of first place, but thanks to big wins against Stanford and California at home this week, the Buffs are beginning to pull away.
Colorado is now tied for second place in the conference with a 6-3 Pac-12 record along with USC, Utah and Washington, but the Huskies currently hold an overall 14-7 record whereas the other three teams sit at 17-5. Right now, Oregon leads the Pac with a 17-4, 6-2 standing.
On Wednesday night, the Buffaloes absolutely buried Stanford as they stormed to a 91-75 victory. And they made quite the statement with that win.
By the end of the night, the Buffaloes completely uprooted the Trees from the three-point range, going 13-of-19 (68.4 percent) on the night. Junior guard Fortune and sophomore guard George King contributed five apiece on that stat line. When a team shoots those kinds of numbers on triples, their opponent won’t stand a chance.
King led the Buffaloes with 23 points, making eight of nine attempted field goals. He was followed by Fortune, who contributed 21 points to the Buffs’ cause. Senior forward Josh Scott and sophomore forward Tory Miller added to those numbers with 14 and 12 points, respectively.
As a whole, the Buffs shot 49.1 percent on the night (27-of-55) but still struggled on the ballhandling side of things, evident in their 15 turnovers.
On Sunday afternoon, the Buffs continued that streak in their down-to-the-wire win against California, 70-62. Although their offense wasn’t firing on all cylinders, especially at the start, they were able to get the job done on the defensive end to secure the ‘W.’
For the first five minutes of the game, the Buffs couldn’t even get on the board, which may have brought back some PTSD after the same thing happened during their first matchup of the season when they didn’t score for the first six minutes.
But somewhere during the first half, their offense and defense started to click. By halftime they were able to rack up a 37-23 lead, but poor offense and a defensive dry spell in the second half almost cost them the game. With just four minutes left on the clock, the Bears cut the lead to four, 62-58.
By the end of the game, however, the Buffs only mustered a 37.9 percent shooting performance compared to Cal’s 40.9 percent. Whoever says defense wins games is on point.
Now the Buffs will look to continue their hot streak in Oregon on Thursday, Feb. 4 as they take on the No. 23 Ducks at 7 p.m. on Fox Sports 1, which will no doubt be a difficult task. If they can work out another win against the Ducks, their separation efforts will boost them even higher in the conference.
