WACO, Texas – When faced with back-to-back road games for the first time this Big 12 play, the Colorado Buffaloes (10-4, 1-2 Big 12) faltered. The Baylor Bears (12-3, 2-1 Big 12) stormed to the finish, while the Buffs’ many missed opportunities haunted a 76-62 defeat on Saturday afternoon.
Colorado simply didn’t have the firepower or ingenuity to keep pace for all forty minutes, with a doozie of fouls (24) and turnovers (20) that made a spark all the more difficult to find. CU was in lockstep with the Bears throughout most of the first half, but a 24-14 loss in the third quarter was all the contest needed to find a result.
“Proud of the way our team battled,” head coach JR Payne noted after the loss. “We were down double digits two times. Brought it back to three points. Brought it back to four points. Shows that this team has a lot of fight, but they were better than us for the part of the game that mattered most.”
While BU had five players score double digits led by junior forward Darianna Littlepage-Buggs (16), the Buffaloes had just two. Jade Masogayo accounted for 13 points and six rebounds, her 10th double-figure scoring performance of the season, but the junior big was not afforded much help. Senior guard Frida Formann logged 10, but on an inefficient 5-for-16 shooting clip (0-for-7 from 3).
Overall, CU shot just 38.6% from the field and 26.3% (5-for-19) on 3s. After a long heave at the first-half buzzer from senior guard Johanna Teder, the Buffs did not hit from beyond the arc until the game was all but over.
Saturday was also the first time an old friend of Colorado, Bears forward Aaronette Vonleh, came face-to-face as a foe. The senior made a mark on her former squad with 15 points and three steals, sparking memories of Buffs fans with her signature rumbles on the interior and disruptions of entry passes.
The affair began with a surprising 9-2 run for the black and gold, the only moment where the Bears, who received three first-place votes in the Big 12 preseason poll, felt on their heels. After trailing 17-16 at the end of the first quarter, Baylor quickly became the aggressor, attacking the basket for 18 first-half points in the paint and making due on seven of nine free throws.
Foul trouble put the Buffaloes in a place they often relish in – a pace of play stuck in the mud – but Baylor’s high-level guards limited turnovers down the stretch of the first half. The Bears used an 11-2 run to lead by nine with less than a minute left until halftime, but a pair of Colorado 3-pointers kept the score close.
While freshman forward Grace Oliver was a bright spot for CU throughout the second half, positive takeaways were few and far between. The Bears continued to generate rim pressure and drew five Colorado fouls in the quarter’s first three minutes, but then the Buffs plugged away at the deficit to trail just 47-44.
That point, however, was the game’s tipping point: senior Baylor guard Jada Walker buried a 3 while junior Bella Fontleroy was fouled under the basket by Oliver. Fontleroy made both from the charity stripe in a five-point play. The crafty junior guard then swiped a pass from Masogayo and went the other way to complete a back-breaking 7-0 run in 23 seconds.
“That's just a dagger,” Payne made of the sequence. “But that's no excuse … We have to be able to take something negative like that and be able to reset, refocus, make sure we're on the same page, and keep moving forward. We can't allow something like that to sort of derail us.”
Baylor’s lead continued to grow and would not budge. Oliver pitched in five of her seven points and four of her nine rebounds in the period, but the Bears coasted to an affirmational win.
"We're just going to have to embrace it, learn from it, and move on,” Payne said regarding the new challenges of the Big 12. “So, having a short memory as far as what we do well and what do we not do well, we have to learn how to fix it, and then we have to move on and prepare for the next one because everything comes so quickly.”
Colorado will now regroup for next week’s homestand. The UCF Knights (7-6, 0-3 Big 12) are up first on Wednesday, with tip-off from the CU Events Center set for 7 p.m. MT (ESPN+).
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