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Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
This team is not good, folks.
The Colorado Buffaloes dropped yet another game, this time on the road to the struggling Oregon State Beavers. The Buffs have fallen to 12-11 and 4-8 in the Pac-12 after losing five of their last six games.
The main culprit tonight was an anemic offense that couldn’t create open looks against a Beavs defense ranked 10th in the conference in KenPom’s defensive rating. Just like we saw in CU’s win over Washington State last week, Tristan da Silva was pretty much the only one who could do anything, as he had 22 points and 15 rebounds, albeit on inefficient shooting. Only J’Vonne Hadley and Ethan Wright stepped up to play decent games.
As most Tad Boyle offenses are, this team needs its point guard to organize the attack. KJ Simpson has not been good for a while now. Ever since he exploded for 25 points against Cal — incidentally the same game he suffered an ankle injury — he’s shot 30% from the field, 14% from three, and hasn’t been able to make up the difference with his passing. It’s been tough because he’s adjusting to a new role and the opposing defenses key in on him every single night, knowing his teammates can’t make them pay for their aggression.
Simpson is working hard and playing tremendous defense. It’s frustrating how little help he has and that he continues to chuck shots despite the cold shooting. There are a lot of minutes going to players that aren’t contributing much at this point in the season and there’s no real solution for that. It’s tempting to say Cody Williams will fix a lot of these problems next season, but Boyle needs to create some sort of structure (he won’t) if his offense is clearly broken.
The Buffs will next host the Cal Bears on Thursday and the Stanford Cardinal on Sunday. They need a sweep to keep their head above water before the schedule gets more difficult.
by Sam Metivier
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