On Monday, Colorado forward Trevor Baskin called the Rocky Mountain Showdown “personal.” After a crushing loss last season to Colorado State in Fort Collins, that’s exactly what Saturday's game was for the entire Buffs roster.
Colorado (7-2) came out with the sense of urgency that it hadn’t shown all season long. After one of its best starts of the season, the Buffs never let Colorado State (5-4) back into the game as they ran away with a dominant 72-55 victory over their arch rival.
“Really a step in the right direction for our team, our program,” head coach Tad Boyle said postgame. “I thought we brought the fight to Colorado State from the get go. Defensively, I felt like we exerted our will and they felt our presence a little bit in the first half and for the most part did a pretty good job.”
After a sleepy performance on Monday against Pacific, the Buffs responded to a heated Boyle with arguably their best half of basketball of the season. Colorado was engaged on both ends right from the opening tip, hounding ball handlers on one end and moving the ball around to generate good shots on the other.
Assane Diop made a massive impact in the opening minutes. The big man knocked down an early 3-pointer from the top of the key before finding center Elijah Malone down low on a beautiful high-low feed to give CU an early 12-5 lead at the first media timeout.
After Colorado State pulled within three, the rest of the Buffs’ bigs got involved. Bangot Dak scored four straight points before Malone added a dunk and a 3-pointer to his tally. Harrison Carrington followed with an and-one before Dak splashed another jumper to cap off a 16-0 run for the Buffs, putting them up 30-11 with just under 8 minutes until halftime.
On the other end of the floor, Colorado State star and former Buff Nique Clifford struggled to find a rhythm after knocking down his first shot from the field. Despite entering Saturday night with stellar averages of 19 points and 11 rebounds per game, Clifford finished the first half just 1-for-9 with two points.
“[The game plan was] just slow down their two main guys, Nique [Clifford] and Jalen [Lake],” Julian Hammond said after the game. “They make their team go, so we just wanted to make everything tough on them. Contest every jump shot, every two. I thought we did a pretty good job.”
Colorado State stemmed the tide from the monster Colorado run, but it never was able to work its way back into the first half. Buffs guard RJ Smith sent the CU Events Center crowd into a frenzy just before the break with a 3-pointer to give the Buffs a 43-21 lead after 20 minutes.
After a lengthy scoring drought from both teams to start the second half, Colorado State guard Kyan Evans tried to get CSU going with five straight points. However, the Buffs continued to swarm CSU in the paint and prevent it from getting anything easy. Baskin answered the mini-run with a huge blocked shot and a fast break bucket to reset the momentum.
Shortly after that, Dak continued to make his impact felt. The sophomore big man knocked down another 3 before stuffing a pair of thunderous dunks to put Colorado up 56-30 with 12 minutes to go.
Colorado’s biggest lead of the night was 26 points before Boyle’s club fell asleep at the wheel. Clifford and Jalen Lake drilled back-to-back 3s out of a timeout to cut the lead to 20 and Niko Medved’s Rams continued to battle while the Buffs’ offense stagnated. However, Colorado State never got within 15 points and the Buffs slowly drained the clock away to secure the victory.
The Buffs played together and did the little things very well in this one, finishing with a plus-11 margin in both rebounding and assists. Dak finished with a career-high 16 points on 7-for-8 shooting in one of the best games of his young Colorado career. Julian Hammond added 13 to complement the big man for Colorado.
Clifford found some buckets late in the game, but the Buffs held him to just 10 points on 4-for-15 shooting. Andrej Jakimovski got the Clifford assignment in this one and did a great job just days after Boyle called him out for his poor defensive performance in Monday’s game.
“Andrej loves challenges,” Boyle said. “Good players usually do. We obviously blew Nique up in the scouting report, rightfully so. You know, he had 25 the other night. He’s a good player. But Andrej takes on that challenge and did a terrific job.”
Jalen Lake led Colorado State with 18 points, but the Rams shot just over 31% from the field while shooting just 7-for-27 from 3-point range.
Colorado’s next chance to add to the two-game win streak will come next Friday, Dec. 13, against South Dakota State. Tipoff of that one will be at 7 p.m. MST and the game will air on ESPN+.
