2 takeaways from a frustrating showing against the Colorado Buffaloes

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Playing in front of the largest home crowd of the 2019-2o season so far, Colorado State men’s basketball fell to the University of Colorado at Moby Arena Friday night.

In the 56-48 win, the Buffs were paced by Shane Gatling. The senior guard finished with a season-high 20 points on 7-of-12 shooting. After beating the Rams once again, Tad Boyle is now 3-o in his last three trips to enemy territory.

Here are three takeaways from the home loss for CSU.

Slow start dooms CSU

The Rams could not buy a bucket in the early stages of the game. In the opening 10 minutes of the first half, CSU went 2-of-13 from the floor and had stretch of over 5 minutes without finding the bottom of the net. From there, things never really got easier for the Rams either. In total, CSU hit just 5-of-28 attempts from the field (17.8 percent) and went 0-of-10 from 3-point range in the first half.

Part of the problem was CSU played way too loose with the basketball. In the first half alone, the Rams recorded eight turnovers. The biggest issue was that the Colorado defenders kept daring the Rams to shoot and CSU simply could not knock down jump shots, though. All half long, the Buffs played two feet inside in the 3-point arc and basically gave the Rams an open perimeter but CSU was never once able to take advantage.

As a result, for much of the first half CSU trailed by about 10 — and it honestly could have been much worse had the Buffs played smarter basketball.

Rams rally but fall short

After only scoring 12 points in the first 20 minutes of action, CSU was able to find its rhythm offensively in the second 20 minutes. The Rams outscored the Buffs 31-21 in the second half and shot 22 percent better from the field.

Unfortunately for the Rams, though, the comeback effort was not enough as the Buffs were able to regain control over the final 5 minutes or so.

Moving forward, CSU has to figure out how to create more consistent offense. These streaky showings have been really frustrating for everyone involved, but especially Niko Medved. Any time that your team scores less than 15 points in a single half, it’s going to put them at a significant disadvantage — and as CSU found out the hard way tonight, some deficits are simply too much to overcome.