Buffs seek better balance beyond da Silva, Simpson
Defensively, there is a belief within the Colorado men’s basketball program the Buffaloes are playing well enough to win more consistently down the stretch.
Offensively, the Buffs at times remain a hot mess. And while turnovers have been CU’S biggest problem, the struggles extend beyond the giveaways.
While the Buffs certainly cannot continue to waste possessions the way they did to the tune of 45 combined turnovers in road losses last week at USC and UCLA, any promising run over the final 12 games of the regular season also will require more consistent production from the role players surrounding the team’s top two scorers, KJ Simpson and Tristan da Silva.
Colorado has played well at home for much of the season and hopes that continues on Thursday against
Washington (7 p. m., ESPNU).
“If there’s a frustration on my part, it’s that we’re not playing up to our capabilities all of the time,” Colorado head coach Tad Boyle said. “We’ve done it in spurts. We’ve done it in games. We’ve done it in halves. We’ve done it in stretches. At UCLA, we did it for 30 minutes.
“We’re doing something right to be in these games. We’re competing. We’re just not finishing.”
Simpson and da Silva both recently won Pac-12 player of the week awards, but outside the two big-time games each of those two players recorded to land those honors, that duo has received little help the past three weeks outside an occasional spark from center Lawson Lovering.
During the Bay Area trip that began three weeks ago, Simpson won his player of the week award after carrying CU to a late win at Stanford and nearly doing the same in an ugly loss at Cal. With Simpson limited by injury the following week at home, da Silva shot .667 (18-for-27) while averaging 23.5 points in a pair of wins.
Both players were less than their best in Los Angeles, and their teammates were mostly unable to fill the void, at least outside Lovering’s double-double at USC. Simpson did score 17 points in each game, but he shot just .414 with 10 turnovers against six assists. Da Silva shot just 7-for-18 in the two Los Angeles games and had two assists with 10 turnovers to continue the dramatic home-road splits the junior has compiled this season.
In the past six home games, da Silva has averaged 21.2 points and 6.8 rebounds while shooting .624 overall and .462 on 3-pointers. He also has posted 11 assists with nine turnovers in those games. In CU’S six true road games this season, however, da Silva is averaging 9.5 points and 4.0 rebounds, shooting .352 overall and .211 from 3-point range, while recording 17 turnovers with eight assists.
The Buffs, of course, could survive a few up-anddown stretches from their top two scorers with a little more support.
Nique Clifford had zero points at USC, five points and zero rebounds at UCLA, and has averaged just 4.8 points and 3.0 rebounds in Pac-12 play.
J’vonne Hadley matched a season-high with 10 rebounds at UCLA, but CU’S third- leading scorer has posted double-figure points just once in the past eight games and is averaging 7.4 points in league play.
“We can’t lose focus. Can’t lose hope,” Clifford said. “We’ve just got to respond and take every game seriously and just put both ends of the floor together. We’ve been guarding, we’ve got to keep doing that. But taking care of the ball is going to be huge for us. Once we can do both of those, it’s going to be a good thing.”