Second-half comeback sends CU Buffs men’s basketball past USC – JS

Quick break

Why the Buffs gained: CU outscored USC 44-21 within the second half whereas holding the Trojans to a .241 area objective proportion within the second half.

Three stars

J’Vonne Hadley: Narrowly missed the primary double-double of his CU profession, ending 7-for-11 with team-leading totals of 15 factors and 9 rebounds.

Cody Williams. One of many key parts of CU’s second-half defensive effort, Williams completed with 13 factors, two rebounds and two blocked pictures.

KJ Simpson: Early foul hassle helped restrict Simpson to a season-low 9 factors, however he added 5 rebounds, 4 assists, and three steals.

Up subsequent: The Buffs host one of many Pac-12’s early front-runners, Oregon, on Thursday (8:30 p.m., FS1).

The Colorado males’s basketball staff had just lately been in the identical place as USC. As just lately as, properly, simply final week.

For the previous 5 weeks, the Buffaloes have performed shorthanded. Till final week, the Buffs managed to go 5-0 for the reason that begin of a run of accidents started with freshman Cody Williams getting sidelined greater than a month in the past. Though that streak ended with a depressing 0-3 street journey final week, successful a number of video games with out Williams and, later, senior Tristan da Silva made CU head coach Tad Boyle adamant in stating a shorthanded USC staff was to not be taken flippantly.

The Trojans limped into Boulder with out three key gamers, but nonetheless very practically managed to limp residence with a victory. At the very least till the Buffaloes put collectively a dominant second half, rallying previous USC for a 68-58 Pac-12 Convention win on Saturday evening.

The end result snapped CU’s three-game dropping streak and ended a run of three consecutive losses in matchups in opposition to the Trojans. Earlier than a season-high crowd of 10,005, the victory additionally marked this system’s five hundredth win on the CU Occasions Middle.

USC performed with out its high-scoring beginning backcourt, with Boogie Ellis (hamstring) and freshman Isaiah Collier (hand) each sidelined as a consequence of harm. USC ahead Joshua Morgan, the highest shot-blocker within the Pac-12, additionally missed his second consecutive recreation as a consequence of an sickness. The Buffs, in the meantime, performed with their prime seven rotation gamers for the primary time since Dec. 3, as backup guard Julian Hammond III returned from a two-game absence as a consequence of a again harm.

“I really feel like we have been making an attempt to not (look previous USC) as a result of we have been on the flip facet of it,” da Silva stated. “We had me and Cody out, and we went 2-0 within the first two video games of convention play. That may’t actually be our mindset coming into video games, that their most important guys are out and that they’re simply going to surrender and provides us a W. They performed properly within the first half, however we turned it round within the second half.”

For a CU staff that has struggled to place collectively 40-minute efforts defensively, the primary half supplied one other irritating sequence, because the Trojans used a sizzling begin to construct a 16-point lead. CU managed to chop the deficit to 37-24 on the break, however USC went into the locker room with a .469 area objective proportion and loads of momentum.