3 takeaways from Colorado's 70-43 loss to Washington State

Colorado’s road trip fell flat.

The Colorado Buffaloes capped off a three-game road swing with a __-__ loss to Washington State, Sunday night in Pullman. CU pulled out a win over Oregon in the first game of the road trip but fell to Washington and Washington State over the weekend. The Buffs are now 13-8 with a 5-6 record in conference play. Colorado’s next game will be at home Thursday against Oregon.

Here’s what we learned on Sunday:

Colorado can’t overcome injuries

The absentees are piling up for Colorado.

On Sunday, three Buffaloes who have been regulars in CU’s rotation were missing.

Starting guard Eli Parquet was supposed to play. He missed both game last week with a lower-body injury but returned for the first two games of the road trip. He was a last-minute scratch on Sunday.

Starting forward Tristan da Silva was also absent as he is dealing with an illness.

Bench big man Lawson Lovering is done for the year with a torn meniscus. He’s the tallest player on the roster by four inches.

With so many pieces missing, Colorado used an eight-man rotation for the first time of the season. The rotation included Will Loughlin, a senior who was put on scholarship earlier this month.

Still, a few missing pieces can’t justify a __-point loss or a 22-point halftime deficit.

The Buffs lacked any sort of spark on either side of the ball. The longest CU streak of the game was a five-point run, until CU scored six-straight with 69 seconds to play.

Take your pick of the stats and the Cougars won that category; points in the paint, bench points, points off turnovers, second-chance points, rebounds, dunks, layups, two-pointers, 3-pointers, free throws, assists, turnovers.

Colorado got beat down across the board. Place some of the blame on missing a couple of key pieces, but that was far from the difference in the game.

Both point guards struggle

Head coach Tad Boyle had hinted at tweaking the lineup after Thursday’s game, and he followed through on Sunday.

Before Parquet backed out of Sunday’s game, Colorado’s starting lineup was supposed to be Simpson-Barthelemy-Parquet-Walker-Battey. This would have been a tweak to Thursday’s lineup, when Nique Clifford was in for KJ Simpson. When Parquet couldn’t go, Clifford took his spot.

Regardless, Boyle wanted to give Simpson his first collegiate start. The plan was to play him at point guard with Barthelmey at shooting guard. With Barthelemy struggling, Simpson poaching his starting job hasn’t been out of the realm of possibility. He seemed to be getting his chance.

But both guards struggled on Sunday. Neither scored a point in the first half. Simpson finished 1-for-7 from the field with three rebounds and five assists. Barthelemy scored five points on 2-for-6 shooting with a rebound.

The competition for the starting job was disappointing.

Jabari leads the way

Nobody looked good on Sunday but start forward Jabari Walker probably came the closest. His 11 points made him the team’s leading scorer and his 5-for-9 shooting made him the only player on the team to make half of his shots.

He also turned the ball over three times and he couldn’t provide the volume of scoring that his team needed.

Walker was a good player on Sunday. But CU needs him to be great.

And against Washington State, the Buffs needed him to play like the best basketball player alive to have a shot.