3 takeaways from Colorado's 76-55 loss to #6 Arizona

More bad news…

The Colorado Buffaloes fell 76-55 to the No. 6 Arizona Wildcats Thursday night in Tucson. The Buffs fall to 3-2 in conference play and 11-4 overall. Head coach Tad Boyle still hasn’t won in Tucson.

Here’s what we learned:

The Buffs make a run

Colorado struggled for most of the night.

Arizona scored the first seven points of the game and eventually led 25-10. They were clearly the better team in the early going, taking advantage of CU’s defensive mistakes and turnovers, while also using their length to challenge every shot the Buffs took.

But, with about six minutes left, CU made its move. Colorado cut Arizona’s 15-point lead to four by halftime, thanks mostly to K.J. Simpson. (More on him later.) CU was in the game with a chance to pull off an upset.

But for the other 34 minutes of the game, CU was outplayed. The Buffs lost the second half 44-27.

These struggles are expected against the No. 6 team in the country, but they’re still disappointing to see. Most of the team couldn’t get anything going offensively. Only one player scored in double-digits. It’s more clear than ever that this team still has plenty of growing up to do.

But, at least for that six-minute stretch, we saw the potential of Colorado’s 2022 squad.

K.J. Simpson lights it up

The biggest bright spot from Thursday’s game was backup point guard K.J. Simpson, and it wasn’t close.

Simpson originally committed to Arizona but wound up signing with Colorado instead. On Thursday he got at least some small amount of revenge.

Simpson was the catalyst in CU’s late-first-half run. He went on a 7-0 tear all by himself and by halftime he had scored half of CU’s points.

The freshman cooled off in the second half, but finished with 17 points on 5-of-11 shooting. That included hitting two of three shots from deep and all five of his free throws. He also recorded four assists, three rebounds, three steals and a block. He only turned the ball over once.

Sadly, Simpson couldn’t find any help from his teammates. If he had, the game could absolutely have turned out differently.

The road 3-point shooting is still weak

Colorado is currently sitting in ninth place in the Pac-12, making just over 32% of its 3-point field goals. But the difference between the Buffs’ shooting at home and on the road is staggering.

Coming into Thursday’s game the Buffs had made 14 of 63 3-point attempts away from the CU Events Center. That’s about 22%.

Against Arizona, the Buffs made 4 of 20 attempts, pulling that number down slightly.

K.J. Simpson made two of three attempts.

Tristan da Silva made his only attempt.

Evan Battey went 1-for-6.

Nobody else made a shot from deep.

It’s tough to win when your shots aren’t falling and it’s even tougher to win when your shots aren’t falling on the road. At some point, the road shooting needs to improve.

Luckily, as Tad Boyle likes to say, the path to a Pac-12 crown is winning your home games and splitting your road games. The Buffs will have a chance to pull off the weekend split when they take on Arizona State on Saturday.