Buffs trying to avoid limping to finish line
Too often, the final score hasn’t gone Colorado’s way this season. For the most part, however, the Buffaloes have been battlers.
That changed on Thursday night.
For the first time in what has been a disappointing and dramatically inconsistent season, CU men’s basketball head coach Tad Boyle questioned the fight his club brought to the floor during a lopsided home loss against USC.
Following an 84- 65 defeat in which the Buffs trailed by at least nine points the entire second half, Boyle said, “I just didn’t feel like that fight was there.”
That’s a bad sign for a team that is physically beaten and trending the wrong direction as March inches closer. The Buffs will have another opportunity to make a statement when they host No. 4 UCLA on Sunday (2 p.m., CBS). Yet with the reality setting in there will be no more games beyond however long the Buffs can survive at the Pac-12 Conference tournament, the lack of fight on display Thursday is alarming for a team whose grit has been an asset in good times and bad this season.
“You’ve got to get these guys’ minds right,” Boyle said. “I think you just have to challenge them. If you can’t get up for No. 4 UCLA? It’s not like we weren’t up for ( USC). ( Wednesday’s) practice, we had great energy. Great focus. I thought our game plan was solid coming in. Now, we didn’t execute our game plan. There’s no ball screen defense that we can run against USC.
“So we’d better figure that out. Because against UCLA is a very efficient offensive team. If we guard like we did (against USC), UCLA doesn’t play a fast tempo, but they’ll score 80 points, maybe 90, if we don’t compete better than we did (against USC) defensively. We’ve got two days.
Normally I’d say that’s not a good thing when you’re playing at home. But maybe it’s a good thing for this group. I’m disappointed in ( Thursday’s) performance.”
CU played without Jalen Gabbidon and Javon Ruffin, both of whom already missed significant time in January. Their absence allowed Quincy Allen to make his non-garbage time debut with the Buffs, and the redshirt freshman responded with seven points and four blocked shots in nearly 17 minutes.
Thursday’s loss might have signaled the end of what already were dimming hopes to land an NIT bid. CU dropped from No. 61 all the way to No. 78 in Friday’s NET rankings, and while nothing is settled in the Pac-12 standings, the Buffs are on track to play in the eight-nine seed game that opens the tournament on March 8.
An upset of the Bruins on Sunday would change that outlook a little. But a loss would give CU no better than a ninth-place finish, regardless of next week’s result against Utah in the regular season finale.
“I have no knowledge of where (Gabbidon and Ruffin) are,” Boyle said after the USC loss. “My guess is no. Quincy, I think has earned some playing time. There’s no doubt about it. Now, he’s got to be a little more solid and consistent, but he did some good things for us. Again, it was his first college game. But he’s been practicing well so we’ll see what happens.
“I don’t know who’s available. I’ll find that out. I don’t make those decisions. Sometimes our trainer doesn’t even make those decisions. Sometimes the players just say, ‘ You know what? I’m out.’ I’m not saying that’s what’s happened with these two, but it’s happened before. I’m just going to coach the guys who show up and in uniform and coach the best that I can coach. ( Thursday) I didn’t do a good job of that.”