After barely getting by a Texas Southern team on Tuesday, the Colorado Buffaloes lost tonight to the Wyoming Cowboys 76-69. Wyoming is a good team and Leonard Washington is hard to stop down low evident by his 22 points, but talent wise, the Buffaloes are the better team. It's not easy to travel up to Laramie and pick up a win, but with a better performance the Buffs could have won. However, that was not the case as Colorado played sloppy defense once again as they allowed Wyoming to shoot 48% from the field and were careless on offense as they turned it over 17 times. Colorado was led by Spencer Dinwiddie with 24 points and Andre Roberson with 16 points and 12 rebounds.
Things the Buffaloes did well:
Andre Roberson had a great game for the Buffaloes as he was active all night long on defense and offense. After a sluggish start to the season, Roberson has really picked it up in the last couple of games. Colorado shot well from the free throw line going 12-15 and was decent from three going 7-18. Spencer Dinwiddie played very well for the Buffaloes tonight as he had 24 points on 12 shots and also had 5 rebounds and 4 assists. Other than that, it was a pretty poor performance for the Buffaloes.
Things the Buffaloes struggled with:
The shooting of Askia Booker is going to be good and bad at times all year for the Buffs. Tonight, it was all bad. He was 2-13 from the field only putting up 6 points and had 4 turnovers. He still needs to improve on his shot selection and try to get to the rim more when his shot isn't going down. Sabatino Chen played one of his worst games as a Buffalo. He's not strong offensively, but he has to show opponents that he can score if needed. It doesn't have to be much, but he has to pick up the occasional bucket. Also, it seems like he never jump stops on the fast break; it would be nice to see him use one of those once in a while. The fouls were an issue and the referees weren't at their finest tonight, but with Wesley Gordon redshirting and Shane Harris-Tunks continuing to be Shane Harris-Tunks, it will be interesting to see how Tad Boyle handles the front court situation in the future. Roberson and Josh Scott each picked up two fouls in the first half and the Buffaloes had to go from trying to get a lead at half to trying to stay in the game by halftime. Overall, the performance just wasn't very good for the Buffaloes and when a team gets 11 points out of 3 of their starters, wins are hard to come by.
Up Next:
The Buffaloes take on the Colorado State Rams on Wednesday at the Coors Event Center. Colorado State is a better team than Wyoming, but with the Buffaloes losing tonight, they should come out ready to play. I don't expect Colorado to play the way they played tonight or the way they did against Texas Southern against Colorado State, but if they do, the Buffs will have lost two in a row heading into their road game at Kansas.