Buffaloes Basketball off to solid start on Italy tour

The Colorado Buffaloes men’s basketball team is playing abroad in Italy at the moment and it seems they are doing quite well. Earlier today, they defeated Dream Team Italy, 70-56.

This game wasn’t televised or accessible over the Internet, so there isn’t much to take away from this game, but we can try anyway. The only recording of the game, presumably, is a box score the Colorado Basketball Twitter account posted:

I’ve written actual game recaps with less information, so why not analyze the Buffs.

The Buffs’ starters were McKinley Wright, Dom Collier, George King, Lucas Siewert and Dallas Walton. The presence of Siewert and Walton tip you off that this isn’t a starting lineup Tad Boyle will be playing this season; instead you can view it as him trying to test out a 5-out lineup (as in, a lineup with five shooters) and see if they can function adequately. Siewert shooting 0-5 with only 3 rebounds isn’t a great sight, but hopefully it was nothing more than bad luck. Maybe Siewert not getting many rebounds is because Walton grabbed them all. In only 10 minutes on the floor, the redshirt freshman grabbed 5 boards, including two on the offensive end. George King sure did post a double-double with three steals. Dom Collier only shot 4-7 from the line, but him drawing fouls is a sign of improvement — he’s struggled in his career scoring inside, so hopefully he’s more confident driving to the hoop. Now he just needs to stop fouling people on the perimeter (he had 4 fouls). Wright, a freshman point guard who may start, shot 5-6 from the field for 12 points in his team-high 31 minutes of play, though you wish he would have more assists than turnovers.

Tory Miller-Stewart (formely just Tory Miller) seems to have a had a good game as well. His 7 points and 5 rebounds aren’t super impressing, but he only committed 1 foul! The Buffs don’t have much depth at big man this season, so him staying on the court will be crucial. Tyler Bey had 7 rebounds (4 offensive), 4 steals and 4 points, which seems like an extreme example of what we can expect from the athletic freshman wing. Namon Wright only played 14 minutes, but it’s impossible to tell if Tad wanted a young player to get those minutes or if Wright is still recovering from a foot injury that he had surgery on last October. It’s also curious why D’Shawn Schwartz played only 6 minutes, or why Evan Battey didn’t suit up.

By account of this box score, it looks like the Buffs are in good shape on their tour of Italy. The freshmen that played were fantastic. The leaders, King and Miller, were solid. The defense held the opposition to a dismal 24% shooting on 38 three-pointers (of 69 total shots). It’s also encouraging to see the Buffs earn 27 free throws and only allow 7. Hopefully next time they make more of their free throws, and hopefully there’s a way to actually watch the game.

In the meantime, we’ll leave you with this: