Digging early holes and being unable to climb out of them has become a habit for the CSU women’s basketball team.
The Rams lost 72-46 at CU-Boulder Wednesday evening after falling behind by double digit points just over five minutes into the first half.
“We felt like we had had to come out early, it’s CSU our rivalry game. They could play their best game or come in here and play their worst game,” CU guard Brittany Wilson said. “If we didn’t punch them in the mouth they’d try to punch us first.”
CSU provided little offensive punch throughout the entire game outside of Sam Martin and Caitlin Duffy, who scored 16 points and 19 points respectively.
The rest of the team scored 21 total and the Rams shot 28.6 percent from the field for the game after being constantly pushed outside by CU’s defense.
“It’s really hard to go back and play defense time after time after time when you’re that far away from the basket,” CSU coach Ryun Williams said. “It’s a frustrating thing.”
CU’s size and aggressiveness on the boards bothered the Rams all night. The Buffs out-rebounded CSU 59-26 and blocked seven shots.
The Rams missed senior Megan Heimstra, who usually provides determination and grit in the paint.
“There were times we needed to compete better on the glass tonight and that’s a disappointment. You have to be willing to go to war in there,” Williams said.
CU lead 37-17 at halftime after holding the Rams to 25 percent shooting from the floor and 11 percent from behind the three point line.
The Buffs took a 10-4 lead with 16:08 remaining in the first half then went on a 12-2 run to extend the margin to 16.
CU bolstered its excellent field goal percentage defense in the opening frame by not fouling.
The Buffs didn’t commit their first team foul until there was 8:28 remaining in the first half and only fouled twice in the opening period.
CSU’s biggest positive and improvement from past games was the fact that the team only turned the ball over nine times.
The loss was CSU’s fourth straight and dropped the Rams to 2-5 on the season. CU, on the other hand, extended its season-opening winning streak to seven games.
CSU will continue its string of road games Saturday when they travel to Tulsa to take on the Golden Hurricane at 1:30p.m.
“We can sit around and mope because we lost to CU because it does stink, but we have another game on Saturday that we want to win,” Duffy said. “We are growing, we really are.”
