3 takeaways from Colorado’s blowout win over Maine

BOULDER — Colorado is UNDEFEATED!

The Colorado Buffaloes wrapped up their first home stand of the season with a 90-46 win over the Maine Black Bears. The Buffs are now 3-0 and on their way to Paradise Jam, an eight-team tournament, where they’ll open on Friday against Southern Illinois.

Here’s what we learned at the CU Events Center on Saturday:

Keeshawn Barthelemy is a bucket

When Keeshawn Barthelemy scored 19 points in the season-opener, it was a great sign for the sophomore point guard. We knew CU would lean on him for a scoring punch from the backcourt, but we’d only seen him score in double-digits twice. His high-water mark came when he scored 11 points against South Dakota.

When Barthelemy scored 20 points in the second game of the season, there was reason to feel excited, since you can only read so much into a scoring outburst against Montana State. But for the second-straight game, Barthelemy showed he could be an effective three-level scorer, and for the second-straight game he’d hit at least half of his field goal attempts.

After converting on 9-of-12 shots and scoring 22 points in 23 minutes on Saturday, it’s time to say Barthelemy’s performance has not been a fluke. He’s strung together three efficient games, while also shooting at a high volume.

It’s official: Keeshawn Barthelemy is good at basketball.

But just how good?

Head coach Tad Boyle mentioned after the game that other teams now have tape on Barthelemy and they also know that he’s their leading scorer. That combination means opponents will be game planning against him, and that he’ll need to be able to counter.

If Barthelemy can keep this up over the next couple of weeks against some tough opponents, it’ll be time to have some fun conversations—does CU have another all-conference point guard on its hands?—but he’s gotta back up these early-season performances just a little bit more first.

Colorado can knock down its 3s

Barthelemy is hot from deep, nailing seven of his first 10 attempts this season, but he’s not the only one.

Senior big man Evan Battey is 3-for-3 in 3 games.

Freshman guard K.J. Simpson has made half of his six attempts.

Sophomore forward has made 40% of his attempts, despite missing all four of his tries against New Mexico.

Julian Hammond III and Luke O’Brien are both batting 1.000… although they’ve only tried once a piece.

Altogether, the Buffs are shooting 46% from deep, good for first in the Pac-12 by more than 5 percentage points.

It’s still too soon to say that the Buffs are a good 3-point shooting team but they’ve been a good one so far.

And that’s with Elijah Parquet and Tristan da Silva, two of the team’s projected top sharpshooters, struggling in the first few contests.

Nothing is certain

All of the above comes with one major caveat: Colorado hasn’t played a good team yet.

Maine slides into the bottom 20 of all Division I men’s basketball teams in the KenPom rankings, an advanced metric that quantifies teams’ overall performance. Montana State and New Mexico don’t rank favorably in KenPom, either.

The Buffs will face a very different caliber of team during conference play, and potentially as soon as this week at Paradise Jam. Colorado State and Creighton (which are both on the other side of the bracket) rank inside the nation’s top 70. Southern Illinois, CU’s first opponent, is inside the top 150.

So far, just about everything we’ve seen from the Buffaloes has been encouraging. They’re making 3s, they’re out-rebounding opponents and the young guys have shown they’re capable of performing at the Division I level.

The first half of the Montana State game and the first few minutes of the Maine game were troubling, but in both cases the Buffs responded the way you’d want them to.

The level of competition will take a step up during Paradise Jam, and then take another step up a few days later when the Buffs face conference foes Stanford and No. 2 UCLA and then host No. 17 Tennessee.

Only a couple of pushover opponents remain on the schedule. We’ll find out soon if Colorado can keep up its early-season form.