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That game sucked, but the Buffs are gonna be fine.
Wednesday’s loss to the Rams in Fort Collins was brutal, there’s absolutely no denying that. It always stings to lose to your little brother and group of five rival school, especially after the amount of **** Colorado fans talked after the Buffs beat CSU in football. After taking a quick temperature on Twitter postgame, a very prevalent reaction seemed to be that the sky is falling and Colorado basketball is collapsing. Well, I’m here to tell you that this is a major overreaction and everything is going to be okay.
First things first, CSU is a really damn good basketball team. Their ranking of 20 in the AP Poll is no fluke. The Rams beat Creighton last week, who is a legit top 10 team in the nation. Isaiah Stevens is one of the best point guards in the country and proved it against CU, as he put up a 20 point and 11 assist double-double on Wednesday. Coach Nico Medved has his team firing on all cylinders
Colorado wasn’t favored going into Fort Collins and they nearly covered the miniscule 3.5 point spread. This game was easily winnable if the Buffs would have just played clean basketball in the first half, but that didn’t happen. Regardless, losing to CSU is less than ideal but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Playing on the road in an absolutely hostile environment against a good team is very difficult.
While I understand losing to the Rams may be difficult for many Colorado fans, this loss shouldn’t make you feel any worse about this team. Before the game, the Buffs were ranked 35th in the Kenpom rankings. After the game was factored into the rankings, Kenpom still had Colorado ranked as 35th. This loss doesn’t really mean that much in the grand scheme of things. The Buffs lost to a really good team on the road, which happens to the best of the best in college basketball.
Now let’s talk about the manner in which Colorado lost. Two main things led to the Buffs dropping this game, being turnovers and three point shooting. The Buffs had 15 turnovers and shot a cool 28% from beyond the arc. Before the season, we knew this team had two glaring weaknesses: turnovers and shooting.
The fact that CU is struggling in these two areas shouldn’t come as a surprise. We knew that those spots were likely going to be their weak points. Wednesday night’s game didn’t reveal any new problems or weaknesses. The Buffs just had a rough go about it and didn’t hit their shots, which is prone to happen every now and then. There’s no need to act like this team is falling apart at the seams, as this sort of bad performance against a good team was unfortunately bound to happen eventually.
If the Buffs start losing games at home to Pepperdine and Utah Tech, then it’ll be time to ring the alarm bells. We aren’t there yet and we are a very long way away from being there. The season is still very young and we should let the Buffaloes run their course. Losing to CSU in Fort Collins really isn’t the end of the world, even though it sucks. We’re going to have to endure CSU fans calling us trash for the next year or so, but that comes with the territory. We won’t really know how great this team is or isn’t until conference play starts, so let’s try to hold off on the overreactions until that time comes.
by RylandScholes
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