Gotta believe in the Buffs
The fun games make you dream. The best ones, the keepers, make you believe.
Saturday at CU Events Center was for believers. Believers, grinders and champions.
“We knew,” CU point guard Mckinley Wright said after the No. 24 Buffs rallied to hold off Stanford 81-74 behind 59 second-half points, “we couldn’t afford to lose this game.”
We’re not trying to get ahead of ourselves here, but …
Ah, to heck with it. We totally are.
Everything was poised to go off the rails. Everything. Two minutes into the second half, they were down 16. Only twice in school history have the Buffs trailed by more points over the final 20 minutes and somehow snatched a win out of it.
Their coach blew a gasket and gifted the Cardinal a fivepoint possession with no time off the clock going into halftime. A scary collision four minutes into the second period left blood on the floor and tears on both benches.
Only instead of accelerating the already mounting tensions, both teams huddled near the scorer’s table, silver jerseys and red jerseys locked arm-in-arm — and lowered their heads in prayer.
“It was an emotional game day; it was an emotional game,” CU coach Tad Boyle would say after his Buffs improved to 8-3 in the Pac-12, rolling into the evening in sole possession of first place in the league and 19-5 overall, the program’s best-ever record after 24 games.
“Sometimes it brings out the worst in me. And sometimes it brings out the best. That (huddle) was an example, (Saturday), of the best.”
Speaking of the best, the last time CU sported an 8-3 record after 11 league games was the winter of 1969, in the old Big Eight. Which was also the last time the Buffs won a regularseason men’s basketball crown.
We’re not trying to get ahead of ourselves here, but …
“It’s difficult to play after (an injury) like that,” said wing man D’shawn Schwartz, who netted 20 points. “But we did a good job of staying tough mentally.”
The toughest moment came with 16:28 left in the tilt, when
CU forward Evan Battey stole the ball near midcourt, beating his teammates down the floor and electing to take it himself. But as the 262-pound Battey went up, he got tangled with 225-pound Stanford defender Oscar da Silva under the hoop. Physics took over from there — the Cardinal junior went down hard, accidentally hitting his head on the floor at the end of his descent. As he lay, motionless, Battey emerged from the pile with what appeared to be blood on his face, and it wasn’t all his.
“Just with his face laying there,” reflected Battey, who finished with 12 points and two boards, “I just broke down.”
Eventually, medical staff helped da Silva off the floor, and he went back to the locker room on his own two feet. Cue the huddle. And cue a 28-10 Buffs run from there, with Wright training a trey from the top to knot the contest at 49-49 with 11:12 left, then converting a tear-drop a minute later to give the hosts their first lead since seven minutes into the contest.
When they’re feeling it, the Cardinal (16-7, 5-5) are UCLA North, Wichita State with better SAT scores. CU misfired on seven of its first nine and 14 of its first 19 attempts from the floor, a pace that suited Stanford just fine.
Boyle, though, not so much. When the Buffs’ Eli Parquet was whistled for a questionable contact foul on Tyrell Terry’s desperation trey with 0.2 seconds left in the opening period, the Buffs coach exploded, drawing a technical foul as he raged. Terry converted all five free throw attempts, allowing the visitors to take a 33-22 lead into the break as a sellout crowd fumed.
We’re not trying to get ahead of ourselves, but …
CU found a way to overcome that, too. Nobody said a banner would be easy. After this one, don’t let anybody tell you it wasn’t worth it, either.