Buffs end season with a whimper
It’s not just that they quit on Tad Boyle. It was watching the Buffs quit on each other that didn’t add up.
It was watching them quit on point guard McKinley Wright, who was supposed to make this CU season, and this team, his campus legacy.
It was watching them quit on wing man Tyler Bey after the floor burns, the finger-tip rebounds, the posterizing dunks.
It was watching them quit playing defense, quit recognizing shooters, after spending the previous four months locking everybody and their uncle down tight.
Washington State’s CJ Elleby is a fabulous gunner, the type who’s going to find a way to get his. He shouldn’t be getting 30 points and six treys on you unless something is very, very, very wrong.
Cougars 82, Buffs 68 in the Pac-12 tournament late Wednesday in Las Vegas was all kinds of wrong. Epic wrong. Historical wrong.
CU had never lost five straight to close out a regular-season under Boyle. The Buffs had never dropped the first game of a Pac-12 tourney trip over 10 years of Tad. Until Wednesday night.
Team Tad went into Las Vegas trying to avoid getting stuck in the NCAA Tournament’s 8-9 game again. The Buffs (21-11) came out of it looking primed for a ticket to Dayton and an 11-seed slot in the First Four — if the First Four games were still a thing.
The last word was a whimper, the mojo of Chicago and the mettle of Shanghai merely ghosts. If Washington State — NET ranking: 115th in the nation — was capable of giving the Buffs a wedgie on a neutral floor, what would’ve happened if CU had to it lace it up against a dance partner with an actual pulse?
Say this for NCAA President Mark Emmert: At least the man spared us that by canceling the NCAA Tournament.
The Buffs didn’t need Bracketville. They needed a mental reset. A slumpbuster.
The Cougars (16-16), the Pac-12 tourney’s 11 seed, were set up to play that part. Or to wash the taste of CU’s current form out of everybody’s mouths, at the worst.
Instead, the Buffs came out sleepwalking and Washington State went into Kansas mode, outscoring CU 22-11 over the first seven minutes of the second half, turning a 10point lead at halftime into an absolute laugher.
Wazzu came into the Pac-12 tourney last in the league in 3-point field-goal percentage (30.4). The Cougars drained eight of their first 15 from beyond the arc and connected on 10 of 21 3-point attempts (47.6%) for the evening.
CU, which came in ranked third in the league from long distance (35.6%), misfired on its first 11 treys and shot 4 for 21 (19%) from beyond the arc. Buffs off-guard D’Shawn Schwartz (0-of-2 on 3-pointers, 0-of-4 from the free throw line) looks positively broken.
“Offensively in the first half,” Boyle told reporters afterward, “I thought we just got punked.”
It’s not just that they quit on Boyle. It’s that they were out-hustled, outboarded, out-scrapped, out-everythinged. Toughness? Gone. Tank? Emptied.
CU had won the rebounding war in its first meeting with the Cougars, back on Jan. 24, by a whopping 17 caroms. Washington State on Wednesday outboarded the Buffs by three (37-34) and racked up nine steals to CU’s four.
The Buffs went to the free throw line 14 times in the first half, which was a step in the right direction. They converted on just seven of those chances, which was a step straight off a cliff.
A fortnight ago, this was Tad’s best team, 21-6 and flying high. Now it might be his most heartbreaking. A season that shot for the moon, fired wildly at the final buzzer, and hit nothing but iron.