The Colorado Buffaloes narrowed escaped twice this weekend, first Washington State, then Washington. The Cougars forced the Buffs into double-overtime, the Huskies forced CU into a nail-biter. Each time Colorado came out on top, Saturday they did so by the score of 81-80.

Here are our three takeaways from the game:

It’s always something

After being outrebounded by four on Thursday night, the Buffs were plus-20 on the glass Saturday afternoon. Without the conference’s fifth best rebounder, Josh Scott, CU was still able to blow away the Huskies in the battle for the boards.

However, whatever positive the rebounds gave the Buffs was negated by their awful 22 turnover game. On Thursday, the squad had eight turnovers in 50 minutes of action, on Saturday they had eight giveaways before the end of the first half.

“The difference in the game is us out-rebounding them by 20, without a doubt,” Tad Boyle said. “With this team, when we put together a defense and rebounding effort like we did tonight, with a turnover effort like we did against Washington State, we’re going to beat everyone in this league. If we continue to turn it over, and guarding and rebounding, we’re going to have close games. If we don’t guard and rebound and we don’t turn it over, we’re going to be in close games. We have to figure this out as a team and get better. That’s our challenge as coaches and the challenge for our players to get it done.”

It seems as though Colorado always finds one area in each game to be deficient, their lack of ability to put it all together in games has been the difference between them being good and great. Every night there is a different part of the stat sheet where one can criticize the Buffs, it’s ever-changing which part of the sheet that is. What it comes down to is consistency, CU hasn’t had much of it this season despite their 19-7 record.

Wes Gordon

The redshirt junior had his second straight very good game. Gordon played 73 game minutes in 40 hours this weekend. His team-leading 17 points and 13 rebounds were the heartbeat of the team on Saturday afternoon.

“Wes is playing with confidence. He’s a presence defensively,” Tad Boyle told. “He misses Josh [Scott] being out there because they play off of each other so well. But with Josh going down, Wes is stepping up… I can’t say enough about the way he’s playing. He had a couple big offensive rebounds on Thursday night, big time offensive rebounds tonight when we needed him the most. What you need is your veteran players late in games to make plays to win games. Wesley Gordon has done that for us the past two games. I’m really happy with the way he’s playing. We’re taking tomorrow off and I don’t think anyone deserves it more than Wes.”

In the absence of Scott, Gordon has taken over down low, doing his usual duties and more so to make up for the temporary loss of the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar award finalist.

Leads

With 14:25 left in the first half George King scored an and-one layup to put the Buffs up 11-8. CU would lead the entire rest of the game, stretching it out to 17 in the first half and 14 in the second half. However, twice their lead was cut to one, and each time Washington had chances to be on top.

Credit: Statbroadcast.com

It was very impressive how the Buffaloes rebuilt their large lead after losing most of it in the second half. But just as unimpressive was how Colorado let Washington back into the game in the final minutes.

Runs are going to happen, it’s a fact of basketball, but if the Buffs are seriously looking to contend into March, they can’t let teams back into games. Twice CU could’ve run away and blown out the Huskies and each time Colorado was fighting to hold on at home. As they come down the home stretch, the Buffaloes need to capitalize on momentum and not sour when ahead.