After a tough home loss to Colorado State earlier in the week, Colorado basketball needed a rebound win before it takes on one of the top teams in the country. On Saturday night at Portland, in their first true road test of the season, the Buffaloes got just that with a bounce back victory, 76-63.
Four of the regular five Buffs starters notched double-digits in the win, led by senior forward Xavier Johnson (19 points), senior guard Josh Fortune (14 points), senior guard Derrick White (13 points) and senior guard George King (12 points).
Earlier in the week, poor shooting plagued the Buffs in a lackadaisical effort against Colorado State, and in the first half of Saturday’s contest at Portland, the same trend appeared to bleed over against Portland. But after a second half turnaround and big offensive push from Johnson, White and Fortune, the Buffs ended the night with 43 percent shooting.
They didn’t get out scott free, however, as neither team handled the ball with exceptional care. The Pilots edged out the Buffs in the battle of the butterfingers with 18 turnovers to Colorado’s 13. White accounted for nearly half of them with six. Although the UC-Colorado Springs transfer seems to be adjusting well enough on offense at the Division I level, White still has some work to do to catch up to the overall pace of the game.
Throughout much of the first half, the Buffaloes (6-2) and Pilots (4-3) competed closely as neither let the other gain much of a lead. But midway through the half, Portland started to get hot as it amassed as much as an eight point lead, 23-15, before the six minute mark hit.
It appeared as though the Buffs hadn’t shaken off their shooting woes from earlier in the week against CSU. Despite the temporary lapse on offense, the Buffs finally found their groove again and closed the gap to just two points by halftime, 30-28.
For the half, Portland managed to shoot 45 percent from the field to Colorado’s 36.7 percent, yet the Buffs only trailed by a pair at the break. The ball-handling on both sides, however, told a different tale. By the midway point of the game, the Buffs had turned the ball over eight times, but that paled in comparison to the Pilots’ 10 possession faux pas.
The tides changed in the Buffs favor in the second half.
After an opening triple from Portland’s Jazz Johnson gave the Pilots the early five-point edge, Colorado sparked a 10-2 run that stifled the Pilots on offense and gave the Buffs the lead for the final time, 40-35.
But the Buffs weren’t done just yet.
Ten minutes later, the Buffs ignited once more on an even more lethal run to put the Pilots away once and for all after a 12-3 run to put them up, 60-48.
From there on out, that was all she wrote as the Buffaloes took their first road game of the season, 76-63. They have three days to regroup before No. 7 Xavier visits Boulder on Wednesday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. The game will be broadcast on the Pac-12 Network.
