Two days ago, following a throttling of Stanford on the road, the Buffs looked like they had turned a corner.

If you can pummel a good Pac-12 team on the road, you should have no problem doing the same to the cellar dweller California Golden Bears.

However, despite Cal shooting 32% from the floor in the second half, despite a stretch of over seven minutes in the second half in which the Bears went without a field goal — despite every missed Cal free throw that invited the Buffs to wake the hell up and take over the game, they didn’t.

Instead, the final score from Berkeley read 71-62 in favor of the Bears.

Valid claims about suspect officiating can be made. But at the end of the day, CU did itself zero favors down the stretch and once again, the Buffs pointed a loaded gun at their foot and pulled the trigger.

In the midst of a legitimate Pac-12 title race, Colorado (16-6, 10-5 Pac-12) failed to take care of business, attaching to its NCAA Tournament resume another inexcusable loss to a wholly inferior team.

Simply put, this Colorado unit is impossible to trust. The Buffs border on having a true Jekyll and Hyde identity.

The loss at Cal was just more of the same: Once every three or four games, the Buffs almost completely lose all ability to rebound, defend, make clutch shots and stay out of foul trouble.

“The bottom of the league teams — we have to stop playing down to their competition and learn how to close games,” McKinley Wright IV said. “We’ve shown we can play with the top teams in our league and the bottom teams have nothing to lose. We have everything to lose. Those three (losses to) Utah, Washington (and now) Cal — they’re going to hurt us.”

Tonight had to be the literal worst way for Wright IV to become the first Pac-12 Conference member of the 1,600 points, 600 rebounds and 600 assists club.

Achieving such a rare milestone is something that deserved to be celebrated but the aftermath of the loss at Cal unquestionably provided far from such an atmosphere.

But on a broader team-centered note, once again this year, after seemingly taking two nice steps forward, Colorado followed it up with a huge lunge backwards.

“Tough loss,” Tad Boyle said after the game. “This one stings because it gives us our fifth loss. We’re back in the pack. I thought we had a chance to compete for a championship, but we’ve just got to figure out a way to win three of our next four against NCAA Tournament teams.”

The Buffaloes have thus far survived their previous blunders at the hands of inferior opponents, as far as the NET Rankings and position on KenPom.com are considered.But at some point, it gets tiresome saying after each bad loss that “it’s only one game.”

Already, the Buffs may have suffered too many self-inflicted wounds to have claimed a Pac-12 title but without question, a rest of the regular season not far removed from perfect is now required if a league championship is going to be a possibility.

A healthy, vengeful Oregon Ducks team awaits in Eugene this upcoming Thursday night. Colorado will look to avoid losing two games straight for the first time all season.