The Buffs continue to have Oregon’s number when playing the Ducks in Boulder.
McKinley Wright IV’s 21 points, buttressed by 17 from Jeriah Horne, propelled Colorado to a 79-72 win over No. 17 Oregon at the CU Events Center Thursday afternoon in a key, NCAA Tournament resume-building victory.
The Ducks (8-2, 3-1 Pac-12) are now 0-10 all-time against the Buffs in Boulder, having never won a game versus Colorado on its home court.
Wright IV added 10 rebounds in the win, notching a double-double, plus five assists.
Evan Battey also contributed a double-double of 12 points and 10 boards, while quietly tying Wright IV for the team-high in dimes with five.
A win is a win, but Oregon certainly kept things interesting until the last seconds, never failing to continue clawing back from deficits.
The Buffs (8-3, 2-2 Pac-12) led by 11 with a bit under five minutes to play and held a nine-point lead with 2:12 to go.
But with 1:53, the Ducks trailed just 73-69, in large part courtesy of a relentless full-court press that plagued Colorado’s inbounding of the ball for much of the game.
Offensively for the Ducks, Chris Duarte proved hard to stop all night, as he led all scorers with 27 points on 10-of-27 shooting. Oregon’s Eugene Omoruyi added 18 in the loss.
While Wright IV and Horne did most of the offensive heavy lifting for CU, in addition to Battey, D’Shawn Schwartz had himself a nice game, going 5-of-11 from the floor and finishing with 12 points.
Notably, in the second half, in both cases directly after the Ducks had hit shots that brought them to within five points of the Buffs, Schwartz drained three-pointers that gave the team a bit of extended breathing room.
In an attempt to inbound the ball late, Wright IV committed a turnover, with the Ducks quickly converting it into a three-pointer that created the aforementioned 73-69 deficit, far too close for comfort for the Buffs, who led by as much as 14 in the final half.
“We didn’t handle the press and pressure that came late — that we knew was going to come,” Tad Boyle said after the win. “Oregon pressures you the whole game and I thought we handled it really for the first 34-35 minutes but down the stretch we’ve got to be better.”
As the first half progressed, it appeared like CU was lucky to be hanging around with the Ducks.
Colorado began the game 0-of-9 from behind the arc until Maddox Daniels finally hit one on the Buffs’ 10th attempt of the game, a shot that tied things at 19-all with 5:29 to play before halftime.
Around that time, Colorado had a shooting percentage of 30%. Things heated up for the Buffs in the second half, evidenced by a 55% make rate that bolstered the entire night of shooting to a respectable 46%.
However, the three-ball remained few and far between for CU, which finished the game having hit only 7-of-26 (28%) attempts.
The Buffs and Ducks were locked in a defense-dominated affair for much of the first half, with a quick 12-6 Colorado lead evaporating due to a dry stretch of offense for just over three minutes.
It wound up being the biggest lead either team would take in the opening half, although Oregon did go up by five, 24-19, with a bit over four minutes to go before halftime.
Colorado ended the half on a good note though, with Horne scoring five quick points on a second chance layup and three-pointer followed by a successful and-1 play from Wright IV.
Oregon didn’t go completely quiet in that time but the Buffs took a 33-31 lead into halftime and Boyle stressed to his players the need to maintain a high temperature level on defense.
“I talked about the fact that we shot 38%, were at 14% from three and we were still (leading by) two,” Boyle said. “‘Let’s continue to make them work for everything on defense, we’ve got to string together some stops’...so we talked about how the only way we’re going to make a run and expand the lead is to get stops. We were able to do that.”
If there was anything to make of CU’s energetic finish to the first half, that momentum was dialed up quite a bit as the final 20 minutes got underway, as the Buffaloes quickly got off on a 14-2 run, taking a 47-33 lead a bit over three minutes into the second half.
Horne started it off with a three-pointer, while Wright IV and Eli Parquet chipped in five and four points, respectively.
But Oregon responded nicely, managing a 9-0 run of its own shortly thereafter that cut CU’s lead to five points at the 14:19 mark.
Colorado had multiple leads of 10 or more in the second half, but each time Oregon managed to keep things far from comfortable for the Buffs, most dramatically at the 1:53 mark when the Ducks had clawed back to within four points, having been down 10 just 33 seconds before.
At that point, Oregon’s full-court press was in full force, but quick back-to-back layups by Wright IV and Parquet gave the Buffs some critical late-game space.
The Ducks’ LJ Figurea hit a three-pointer with 19 seconds to play, making things 77-72 in favor of the Buffs, but Battey hit a pair of late free throws and sealed the win for the Buffs.
Due to Covid-19 issues within Oregon State’s program, Saturday’s home game for CU against the Beavs has been postponed, with one of a number of schedule changes for the Buffs of late being that the team will now travel this Monday to face Utah (4-3, 1-2 Pac-12) for their next game.
With some off-days ahead of this weekend and eyes not turned towards preparing for the Utes, the Buffs leave Boulder having added an impressive Top 25 victory to its resume, certain to look nice when it becomes time to determine who’s going to the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s huge — Oregon’s a really talented team and they were No. 1 in the conference,” Wright IV said. “They started there at No. 1 and were 8-0 overall and have their leading scorer in Chris Duarte and one right behind him in Omoruyi. Each of them were averaging 18.5 points or something a night.”
“To be able to come in and get this win is huge for us, our program and Selection Sunday when it does come.”
The Buffs and Utes tip-off from the Jon M. Huntsman Center on Monday, Jan. 11 at 4 p.m. MST. The game will be televised on the Pac-12 Network.
