106-79. Call it a Rocky Mountain Low.
This game started out about as bad as Panther fans always fear when facing a ranked, P5 opponent. (it'd be nice to not have that feeling some day, but it's a program still very much "climbing the NCAA respectability ladder"... and it's a process that takes time- and winning- lots and lots of winning).
Markeith Browning III won the tip for the Panthers, but that was about all the good news in the first half. Freeman was held to 2 points on 4 shots. Pullian looked like an entirely different player (not in a good way). Elijah Jameson couldn't run the offense against the Buffs. We shot 3-15 from "our bread and butter" beyond the arc in the first 20 minutes. 😐
Thankfully, Browning, Eric Pratt, Darius Duffy, and Aaron Franklin did provide some spark (driving through the Buffalo herd to the cup, grabbing rebounds fearlessly) that kept this game from looking like a Marquette vs. DIII Little Sisters of the Poor result. But sadly, almost from the jump, this game seemed as inevitable a loss as a Washington Generals futile attempt to top the Harlem Globetrotters.
To be clear: this was against #25 Colorado- no cupcake by any stretch (they will probably be in the Tourney). But wow, this game was much more of a mismatch that even the -18pt line predicted. Relative to how good we know this team can be- we sucked. We should have lost by less than 15 points. Shoot, we could have won. But if you go cold shooting you better have defense and we don't seem to have that down pat yet- at all.
The second half rolled on with much the same torment as the first. Zach Howell mercifully got a hot hand and made 5-7 from behind the perimeter. But we were already down 40 at that point. It's hard to overstate just how badly we got beat this night in Boulder. Any kind of 3pt barrage that might get us back in this fight was not going to happen- hell, for every Howell trey, CU seemed to respond in kind. We could not make a dent in that deficit all night. Maybe it was the altitude, who knows?
Colorado played like a team vying for March Madness. And they shot the lights out, yes (58.7% FG and 65.0% 3PT). But amongst all the Buffalo sure-shots from KJ Simpson (23pts, 5ast), Tristan Da Silva (17pts, 3ast, 3reb) and company, it was at the moment in the early minutes of the second half when Simpson splashed a trey from the top of the key without a single Panther within 10 feet of him that I realized 2 things:
(1) the game was effectively over (down 80-48 with absolutely no hope in sight)
(2) the Panther fans loudly chattering about us having an alarmingly horrible defense- are probably right.
It's a good thing that on Friday night we'll have a much more "bounce-back"-able contest vs. DIII Luther downtown at Panther Arena. It's a bad thing that the Luther game won't draw as many casual walkup fans (the best kind of fans because they grow exponentially as the band wagon rolls on with success). Not after hearing about this spanking.
Next day up.
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