LAS VEGAS – Desperate for points, the Colorado women’s basketball team tried something it hadn’t done all year.
It worked for a while, but the Buffaloes ultimately didn’t have the firepower to hang with Washington State in a 61-49 loss on Friday in the Pac-12 tournament semifinals at Michelob Ultra Arena.
CU’s offense was anemic for the first 22 minutes.
The Buffs had 16 points in the first half – their lowest half in Pac-12 Tournament history. They had six points in the first quarter, tied for the lowest-scoring quarter in their Pac-12 Tournament history.
Two minutes into the second half, the Buffs were down 34-18.
“Playing from behind, it becomes kind of desperation,” junior Frida Formann said. “Our offense, we went to something completely new and that’s hard to sustain for a long period of time because we’ve never done it before.”
The Buffs went to a small lineup, with four players on the perimeter and one post player.
“We were just trying to create opportunities where we could put the ball on the floor to be more aggressive with one post player to sort of clean up anything near the basket and keep on the glass,” head coach JR Payne said. “But, just trying to create more with some tenacious players that defend and can put the ball on the floor to create.”
To that point, forward Aaronette Vonleh had been CU’s most effective player, hitting 8-of-10 shots. With the offensive switch, Vonleh didn’t take a shot for nearly 14 minutes. However, the guards took over. Formann, Jaylyn Sherrod and Kindyll Wetta got rolling a bit, sparking a 20-4 surge that tied the game at 38-38 by the end of the third quarter.
While the switch got CU back into the game, Formann said it was too difficult to sustain.
“We’ve never done that before, so I think it helped us for a while and then it didn’t keep working for us,” she said. “As players, we didn’t know what each other were doing and you don’t have that type of synergy with a new offense.”
After CU tied the game a second time, at 41-41, it went 3-of-15 in the last 7:40.
Notable
Sherrod reached the 1,000-point mark for her career and now has 1,009. … Sherrod had six steals, tying Kennedy Leonard for the most by a CU player in the Pac-12 Tournament. Both did it against Washington State. … Vonleh’s nine made field goals tied for the most by a Buff in a Pac-12 tournament game (Chucky Jeffery had nine against Stanford in 2013). … The Buffs fell to 0-4 in Pac-12 semifinal games. Overall, they’ve lost six consecutive conference semifinal games since winning the Big 12 Tournament in 1997. … In program history, the Buffs are 8-9 in conference semifinals. … Washington State won its 22nd game, setting a new school record.
