Things didn’t go as smoothly Monday night as they had over the first three games of the season for the Colorado men’s basketball team, but the Buffs found a way to pull out a win late, knocking off Richmond, 64-59, in the semifinals of the Sunshine Slam.
Colorado’s first three games, all at home, were all comfortable wins. The offense was rolling, the shots were falling and the points were piling up for the Buffs as they cruised to a 3-0 start and a spot in the AP top 25. This time, in Daytona Beach, Florida, they ran into a tough-minded Richmond ballclub on a neutral floor that didn’t give them anything easy.
“We needed to face a little adversity and see how we reacted, and this team reacted like I thought they would,” coach Tad Boyle said postgame. “They dug in. At the end of the game, when you get stops and you make free throws, it gives yourself a chance to win those games and we did both those things tonight.”
The Buffs established a lead early on in this one, but the Spiders did a good job of never letting the game get out of hand. They stayed attached throughout the first half, never letting the Buffs pull comfortably ahead. Richmond controlled the pace of the game throughout, working the shot clock and keeping Colorado out of transition where it has excelled thus far this season.
In the half court, it was a slog for the Buffs offense. Colorado was unable to find the same ball movement that it had diced up its previous three opponents with and was forced to resort to a lot of difficult, contested 2s. The Spiders crowded the 3-point line and made the Buffs earn every bucket, holding Boyle’s group to just five points over the final 5 minutes of the first half, as Colorado took just a 28-25 lead into the break.
“Their game plan was to take the 3s away from us,” Boyle said. “They were really up pressuring us, and we didn’t do a good job in the first half of cutting. They’re up pressuring the ball and they’re sagging off our big in the lane, but everybody else is kind of out. … We put no pressure on the rim in the first half. We put a lot more pressure on the rim in the second half.”
In the second half, the Buffs started to find some more success offensively, and KJ Simpson was the catalyst. The junior point guard was ultra-aggressive coming out of the break, scoring six of the Buffs’ first eight points in the second half.
But Richmond was going to go down swinging. An 8-0 run capped off by a Dji Bailey layup gave them the Spiders their first lead of the second half with just over 10 minutes remaining in the contest, but Colorado continued to respond. The two teams went back and forth down the stretch, before big man Eddie Lampkin Jr. came up with a pair of game-swinging plays in the final minutes.
With the Buffs leading 56-51, Lampkin was beaten off the dribble by Bailey, who drove baseline and laid it in to cut the CU lead to just three. The next time down the floor, the Spiders went to the exact same action, but this time, Lampkin was ready. He beat Bailey to the spot, forcing the Spiders’ guard out of bounds for a turnover. On the other end, Lampkin found Tristan da Silva with a beautiful pocket pass for an easy bucket that put the Buffs up by five.
“Phenomenal. He had an energy impact,” Boyle said of Lampkin. “He was dialed in.”
The Buffs salted the game away at the free throw line in the last minute to pick up a hard-fought win and advance to the Sunshine Slam championship game Tuesday where they will take on Florida State, which knocked off UNLV in the other semifinal earlier in the day.
Simpson led the way for the Buffs with 23 points, 16 of them coming after halftime. The only other Buff in double figures was da Silva, who scored 15 points to go along with eight rebounds. J’Vonne Hadley stuffed the stat sheet once again in this one, adding six rebounds, three assists and four steals to his six points.
The Buffs had been on fire from the 3-point line, but only got 10 looks from distance in this one, making three of them. They had also been dominating the assist-to-turnover ratio, but struggled to find easy buckets off of assists in this one, notching just nine helpers to 12 turnovers. They dominated the free throw battle, knocking down 21 of their 25 attempts from the charity stripe, while Richmond was just 8-for-11.
Jordan King continued his stellar start to the season for the Spiders, equaling Simpson with 23 points. The Spiders guard was a flamethrower all night, knocking down tough jumpers from all over the court no matter who was in front of him, while also leading the team with seven boards. Bailey was the only other Spider in double figures with 11.
The Buffs will now have to deal with a quick turnaround before tomorrow’s title game against a deep Seminole squad. Florida State knocked Colorado out in the round of 32 in the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
Tip-off for the trophy in Daytona Beach will be at 2 p.m. MST.
