After a rocky first half of multitudinous turnovers, Colorado found its offensive and defensive footing in the second as it sailed to a 75-68 victory over Air Force at Clune Arena on Monday night.
All season long, it’s seemed as though the Buffaloes (9-3) have been fighting the internal battle to discover themselves and what they can do. They beat two top 25 teams but lost to Colorado State by a remarkable margin and barely beat a Division II team.
As the first half of Monday night’s contest wore on, that same theme of the season bared its crooked, yellow teeth as the Buffs turned the ball over a horrendous 12 times, with their shooting coming as their only salvation.
“Take care of the ball, but also stay aggressive — I think that was why we were turning the ball over,” junior guard George King said. “We were trying to get the ball inside aggressively, so basically our emphasis was take care of the ball but also stay aggressive within doing that.
“That’s what you saw in the second half, but we stopped guarding, and we can’t have that. We’ve got to be able to do both, and if we’re able to do both, we’ll be a scary team.”
The Buffs lost the board battle by five, with 33 rebounds to AFA’s 38. By the end of the night, however, they corrected their first half ball-handling woes as they finished the game with 15 turnovers overall.
“Look, it’s always something with this team. This was a good win, we found a way,” coach Tad Boyle said. “But I’m really disappointed. I think that’s the biggest thing. Three of the last four games we’ve been out-rebounded. That’s not Colorado basketball. That’s not who we’re about. And we got to fix that, because guess what? We’re going to play against bigger, more athletic teams than Air Force.”
Perhaps most importantly, Colorado guard Dominique Collier made his comeback after sitting out the past nine games with a foot injury. The junior saw 19 minutes and collected nine points for the Buffs, despite showing some pain on the court in the second half.
“It felt great,” Boyle said. “We needed Dom, and he played a few more minutes than we expected him to, but we needed him. We needed him to make some shots and he made some shots.”
Despite some foot soreness by the time the final buzzer sounded, Collier was ready to get back into action. Mentally, anyway.
“It felt good to get back in there,” Collier said. “I was a little winded at times, but I expected that because I haven’t run like that in a long time, especially in-game speed.”
With senior forward Wes Gordon in the picture, the Buffs were able to straighten out their beaten path in the end as they found their footing in the final 20 minutes of play.
Gordon, who returned to his hometown of Colorado Springs with the away matchup, finished the night with 10 points, nine rebounds, five blocks and three assists. Behind his stellar performance, four more Buffs helped suck the life out of AFA’s defense with double-digit scoring of their own: Xavier Johnson (14 points), King (13), Derrick White (12) and Deleon Brown (10).
Over the past two games, Brown has scored a combined 25 points as the freshman seems to be getting more comfortable in his Buffalo hide. He also finished with a game-high four assists and contributed a strong defensive presence at Clune Arena.
Throughout much of the first half, the Buffs struggled to keep it together on offense. In the first eight minutes of the game, they averaged a turnover a minute and finished the half with a grand total of 12.
After going down by as much as five points, 13-8, roughly six minutes into the game, the Buffs started clicking a little more on offense. Over the last nine minutes of the half, they outscored the Falcons 17-6 and held a six-point edge at the break, 27-21.
Despite the close score at the half, the Buffs excelled on offense with 53 percent shooting, but the Falcons couldn’t get the ball to fly their way, shooting only 29 percent.
At the start of the second half, the Falcons didn’t take long to find their mojo and roll with it. Four and a half minutes in, they retook the lead, 33-32, after a hot streak.
With 10 minutes remaining in the game, the Buffs and Falcons reached a 48-all stalemate, and the Buffs clearly were not about the let that slide for long. They responded with a 14-6 run over the next three and a half minutes, gaining their first sizable lead of the night, 62-54.
It was a deficit the Falcons could not recover from, no matter how hard they tried.
After going down by 13 with nearly four minutes on the clock, the Falcons went on the hunt and outscored the Buffs 10-2 in an attempt to regain the lead.
Luck, as it would seem, did not sway in their favor in the end.
At the end of it all, the Buffs walked away with another ugly win, 75-68, against their southern, in-state rivals. They return to their home court on Thursday, Dec. 22 at 6:30 p.m. as they face Eastern Washington. The game will be broadcast on the Pac-12 Networks.
“We haven’t played to our capabilities yet, and so part of that is encouraging, but the other part is like, ‘What the hell are we waiting for?’” Boyle said. “So you can look at it two ways, and that’s what I try to do as a coach. Got to get these guys to play hard, play smart and play together.”
