Team Colorado’s run in The Basketball Tournament is over, as the former Buffs fell in New York to the No.4 seeded Armored Athlete squad 84-75 on Saturday.
Despite Colorado’s being runner-up last year, many questioned if Team Colorado was prepared for a talented Armored Athletes squad in the Super 16 round of The Basketball Tournament.
The Armored Athletes team is a squad that’s made it look easy so far in the
beginning rounds of TBT as the No.4 seed, but also hasn’t faced a team with the firepower that Team Colorado brought to the gym.
Armored Athletes is a team with a core of former Indiana Hoosiers and also a pair of Oregon Ducks. In that mix, a few of those players won a D-League championship together last year with Raptors 905, but that didn’t seem to bother GM of Team Colorado, Beau Gamble. And it didn’t mean they’d switch anything up heading into the game.
“We focus on us; all of our guys went to the University of Colorado and played for the Buffs,” said Gamble. “It’s great for them that they won a D-League championship together, but we all went to the same university and have the same common bond, so that’s what we play for.”
Team Colorado played Colorado Buffaloes ball as they fought throughout the game, but it came to an end due to a stellar second half by the Armored Athlete squad.
The first half was a game of runs as it was Colorado that started on an 11-0 run. Next, Armored Athletes went on a 13-0 of their own, but it was Team Colorado that held a 39-36 lead at the half. The main reason was Marcus Hall.
Hall proved to be too much for Armored Athlete in the first half as he finished the half with 18 points. But, as Head Coach for Team Colorado Dwight Thorne knew, changes needed to be made.
“Everything we do is built around [Hall], I give him the freedom to do what he can do and he makes big plays. It makes my job easy,” said Thorne before talking about what changes were needed for the second half. “We [weren’t] doing too good on defense,” said Thorne.
The second half was another battle as there were many lead changes throughout.
Julian Gamble, who had a big first half, picked up his fifth foul early in the second half and instead of giving up, Armored Athletes seemed to rally going up by as much as 6 with 4:09 remaining in the game.
From there, Colorado made a few runs.
Hall, who finished with 29 points in a losing effort, made free throws, then another lay-up to have Colorado down four points, but Armored Athletes were too far in control after a dagger 3-pointer from deep to seal the win.
Featured Image Credit: TBT Colorado, Twitter
