The final score wasn’t truly indicative of how close a game the Colorado Buffaloes made their 77-66 loss to Cal on Sunday afternoon. Then again, it also wasn’t truly indicative of how dominant the Golden Bears were at times.
Cal ran out to a 23-point first-half lead on the Buffs thanks to a 15 points from Charlie Moore in the opening 20 minutes, but had that lead cut to just five inside of four minutes remaining in the game. A Derrick White 3-pointer narrowed Cal’s margin to 62-57 with 3:18 remaining, part of a 25-point effort from White.
The Golden Bears regained control late, however, thanks to a Grant Mullins 3-pointer and a 12-of-14 team effort from the free-throw line down the stretch. Mullins’ basket was the only shot Cal made from the floor in the final five minutes of the game.
Colorado snaps a three-game Pac-12 winning streak and runs their record to 13-11 (3-8 Pac-12). With the loss, Colorado will need to win out to reach the 20-win plateau before heading into the conference tournament. Five of CU’s last seven games are at Coors Event Center, including the regular-season finale against these same Cal Bears.
