ANOTHER SHOT AT IT
No. 4 Buffs eager for second chance against No. 17 Oregon State
It wasn’t long ago that reaching the 20-win mark would have been cause for celebration for the Colorado women’s basketball team.
Those 20-win seasons were rare for a while, with the Buffs reaching that milestone twice in 17 seasons from 2004-05 to 2020-21.
Fourth-ranked CU hit that mark on Friday with a rout of Oregon, but it didn’t even register as a milestone to head coach JR Payne.
“No,” she said. “Short answer — no. We’re just trying to be great every day. We’re trying to win every single game and we feel like if we play great basketball, do our jobs, stay together, stay connected, then we have the potential to do that. I actually didn’t even know we were at 20, so that’s awesome. Now we’ve gotta get to 21.”
For the first time in two decades the Buffs have posted three consecutive 20-win seasons, but after Friday’s dismantling of the Ducks, the Buffs quickly turned their attention to a team that handed them one of three losses.
No. 17 Oregon State visits CU on Sunday riding a four-game win streak that began with a 68-62 victory over the Buffs on Jan. 26 in Corvallis, Ore.
Although OSU has been on a roll and deserves plenty of credit for that win, the Buffs felt they played poorly. They hit just 39.6% of their shots, allowed the Beavers to hit 48.1% of theirs, got outrebounded 30-27 and piled up 17 turnovers.
“It left a sour taste in our mouth,” CU senior Maddie Nolan said. “(Sunday) is a great opportunity for our team to show what we can work on from that game, what we saw and just our improvement from that time to now.”
CU’S been a better team since then. The Buffs are also on a four-game winning streak and their offense has clearly broken out of its funk. In the past two games, the Buffs have scored 170 points while hitting 55% of their shots, racking up 57 assists on 71 buckets and committing just 18 turnovers.
On Friday, CU’S offense was as good as it’s been all season, with 32 assists — the most by a Buffs team in 29 years — on 36 buckets as they hit 90 points for the fifth time this season.
“No one was forcing anything tonight — or last weekend (at Washington),” Payne said. “We’re just not forcing anything. Just play great basketball, do your job, move off the line of the defense. Honestly, it’s that simple. … Sometimes when you talk about something, and then you see how successful it can be, you go, ‘Oh wow, yeah, that’s really good. Let’s keep doing that.’ And so I think we’re just doing
that really well.”
Oregon State will be a much different challenge than Oregon, however.
While Oregon is one of the bottom teams in the Pac-12 this year, Oregon State is one of the best — and it has had the stingiest defense in conference play. The Beavers have played their way into conference title contention and can take a big step toward that goal with a win in Boulder.
CU, on the other hand, can strengthen its title hopes with a win, while removing some of the bitter taste of that loss in Corvallis.
“Anytime you don’t perform the way you want to perform, you always almost want to run it back, like immediately,” Payne said. “Like, just let’s turn on the lights and let’s play again. I’m sure we all feel like that. Oregon State’s one of the hottest teams in the country right now and they’re really good. They’re deep, they’re big, they can score, they can defend, so we’re definitely excited for that challenge.”