Free throws were one of many problems for Colorado on Saturday

BOULDER — Colorado’s loss to Cal on Saturday stung.

“This is a game we should have won and and we weren’t good enough tonight,” head coach Tad Boyle said after the game. “We weren’t good enough offensively in the second half. And we had some guys did not play up to their potential.”

The Buffs were double-digits favorites in Berkeley, but it was the Golden Bears that came out victorious by a 78-69 final score. With a win, the third-place Buffaloes would’ve held pace in the Pac-12, remaining one game back of USC, the leader. The loss dropped Colorado to fourth place and left it unlikely to compete for the conference title with only four games remaining.

Boyle’s initial explanation of the loss was simple.

“We weren’t good enough defensively tonight and we weren’t good enough offensively tonight,” Boyle said. “When you put those two things together, you know, it’s hard to win in any League, it doesn’t matter if it’s the Pac-12 or whatever.”

If you dig a little deeper, there are plenty of reasons for the loss.

The list starts with free throws.

Colorado went into the game not just leading the nation in free throw percentage, but on pace to set a new all-time record. Boyle has stated that one of his goals in each game  is to make more free throws than the other team shoots. Most nights, Colorado has achieved that goal. On Saturday, Colorado was 15-of-21 from the line, while Cal was 20-28. (Boyle noted that his team’s 71.4% shooting that night was still above the national average, though it was disappointing for the team.)

Cal’s star Matt Bradley, a tank of a guard, led the way for Cal with 10 free throw attempts. He turned those shots into nine of his 29 points. Bradley didn’t play when Colorado took on Cal in Boulder in January, an 89-60 win.

“They were aggressive and it’s… it’s difficult,” Boyle said. “Like Bradley; Parquet is guarding him 16 feet from the basket and he backs him down to four feet from the basket and the foul’s on Eli. Okay, well, I guess they’re going to shoot a lot of free throws when that happens.”

But Bradley’s ability to get to the line wouldn’t have been a problem if Colorado could earn some freebies too.

“We didn’t get to the line as much,” Boyle said. “We haven’t been getting to the line as much as we normally do. And we’ve been fouling too much. And I guess maybe I’ve gotta start teaching flopping. I don’t know what I’ve got to do as a coach, but I have to do something different than I’m doing right now because fouling the team and putting them at the line 28 times is not who we are.”

Beyond the free throws, Colorado faced other problems.

Boyle said he thought he “over-coached” in the second half. He said Colorado had too many quick possessions. He said the fact that Cal was putting the ball in the basket so often meant that the Buffs couldn’t start their transition offense.

Cal’s Jalen Celestine set a new career-high for a full game in the first half with 11 points. He made three of four 3-point attempts in the first half, more than he’d made in his entire career combined. Meanwhile, Colorado shot 3-of-15 from 3-point range for the entire game. If you bet on Celestine to make as many 3s as Colorado, you probably made a whole lot of money.

Additionally, Jabari Walker wasn’t available due to injury and junior forward Evan Battey and star point guard McKinley Wright IV dealt with foul trouble early in the game.

Wright said twice that the Buffs’ coaches put together a “perfect” scouting report that the team botched.

“We’ve gotta execute better, man,” Wright said after the game. “We have to stop playing down to our competition and learn how to close games. We’ve shown we could play with the top teams in our league, and the bottom teams, they have nothing to lose. We have everything to lose and those three—the Utah (game), the Washington (game), the Cal (game)—they’re gonna hurt us. We’ve gotta find a way to get some wins down the stretch here late in conference play.”

Those three games make up 60 percent of Colorado’s conference losses, and those teams currently sit in 7th-, 11th- and 12th-place in the Pac-12. For context, Colorado has won four of five games against  top-five Pac-12 teams.

Is Tad Boyle scared by his team’s losses to the bottom of the Pac-12?

“It’s not scary. It’s frustrating as hell is what it is,” Boyle said. “It doesn’t matter what league you’re in—it doesn’t matter if you’re in the Big Ten, or the Pac-12, or the Big Sky—you name the league, you’d better be ready to play every night you step out because you can get beat. The last place team can beat the first place team or the fourth place team or the third, whatever the heck we were going in here.”

Colorado’s path to a Pac-12 crown hasn’t totally faded. If Colorado wins out, they’ll likely win the Pac-12 if USC loses two additional games and UCLA loses one. Even though the two teams will face off once more this season, the Buffs’ likely lost out on the conference crown on Saturday.

But there’s plenty left to play for, and the Buffs will be back in action late Saturday night against the Oregon team that just passed them for third-place in the standings.