Utes beat Buffs; Pac-12 tourney begins on Wed.

UTAH 64, COLORADO 54

Colorado men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle had been waiting almost all season to see his Buffaloes play on the road like they did for the final 20 minutes Saturday at Utah.

“The effort and the toughness and the energy we played with was good enough,” Boyle said. “I love that Colorado team.”

He’s not so fond of the Colorado team that played the first half, however.

Despite CU’S furious second-half rally, the Buffs were unable to overcome a dismal first half in a 64-54 loss to Utah in the teams’ regular-season finale at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.

The Buffs (16-14, 8-10 Pac-12) go into the Pac-12 Tournament as the No. 8 seed and will play No. 9 Arizona State (2010, 8-10) in a first-round game Wednesday at 1 p.m. MST at T-mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The Utes (19-10, 11-7) secured the No. 3 seed and a first-round bye with their victory over the Buffs.

“We were so inept and so poor in the last part of the first half,” Boyle said. “We weren’t very good offensively or defensively and the problem is we let our frustrations on offense bleed over to defense, which when you’re not mentally tough, that’s what happens.

“The first half is where we lost that game.”

Freshman guard Mckinley Wright scored 12 of his teamhigh 16 points after halftime to lead the rally, but it wasn’t enough as the Buffs fell to 1-10 in true road games.

CU shot 1-for-13 from the floor in the final six minutes of the first half, while Utah went on a 16-3 run to take a 41-24 lead into intermission. The Utes’ biggest lead was 18 points. CU has rallied from that big of a deficit to win a game just six times in program history.

“That’s happened a couple times this year where we put ourselves in a deep hole and try to dig our way out, and unfortunately it didn’t work tonight,” Wright said. “We have to come out with a lot better energy in order for us to get wins on the road.”

That energy was certainly there in the second half.

Despite the Buffs’ big deficit, Wright and his fellow freshmen led a huge rally.

Wright scored the first four points of the second half and then Lucas Siewert and D’shawn Schwartz sparked a 12-0 run that pulled the Buffs to within 46-42 with 9:27 remaining.

“We just needed to play with a lot more energy and toughness than we had in the first half,” Wright said. “In the second half, we showed a lot of fight and a lot of effort. We had a chance to get it to two or tie the game up, but unfortunately we had some turnovers and missed rebounds.”

After getting within four, CU had three turnovers, two missed shots and two missed free throws on its next six possessions.