Colorado's loss to UCLA is a missed opportunity, not a death sentence

The No. 20 Colorado Buffaloes may not be No. 20 much longer.

Their blowout — BLOWOUT — win over USC in Los Angeles Saturday night may help the Buffs stick in the same range in this Monday’s version of the AP Top 25 rankings but a bad loss to UCLA on Thursday is cause for concern.

UCLA isn’t an elite basketball program at the moment. It’s 4-4 in the Pac-12 and 11-10 overall. It’s easy to look at the lineups the Bruins and the Buffs put on the court Thursday night and say there’s no reason Colorado should have lost.

But winning on the road is hard.

Really hard.

Expecting a sweep on the road is setting your sights too high. It’s always the goal, but it’s not a goal worth wetting the bed over when it isn’t fulfilled.

Last week, Colorado head coach Tad Boyle said at some point this season, his team needs to sweep a road trip, and they may have to do it twice to win the regular-season Pac-12 title.

That’s reasonable.

Keep these numbers in mind:

• Colorado is .500 on the road this season in conference play.
• The rest of the Pac-12 is a combined .306.
• No team has more home losses than road losses.
• Only two teams have as many home losses as road losses.
• One of those two teams is Washington.
• Washington has won two games and both were at home.
• Only one team — Arizona, this weekend — has swept a road trip.

In simpler terms, winning on the road is hard. Really hard.

It’s frustrating that the Buffs converted the tougher half of this road trip, but to say that the UCLA loss causes a major problem is to forget what makes the weekends on the road so difficult; It isn’t always about who you play, it’s about whether you can show up.

If Colorado shows up, it’ll have good odds against virtually every team in the conference. If it doesn’t, it still might be able to pull up a win or it could fall to any team in the league.

Showing up is much more difficult on the road, where a variety of factors can negate the talent advantage. This isn’t just true of Colorado, that’s how it works for every team in the Pac-12 and in the country.

The Buffs were clicking on Saturday. They weren’t on Thursday.

No team in the country, especially this season, is playing good games night-in and night-out.

Look at this list of teams:

5. Florida State
8. Villanova
10. Seton Hall
11. Oregon
12. West Virginia
13. Kentucky
14. Michigan State
16. Butler
18. Iowa
20. Colorado
21. Houston
25. Rutgers

Do you know what they have in common?

That’s right, they’ve all lost a basketball game since the last AP Poll was released on Monday.

Sunday morning, No. 19 Illinois and No. 18 Iowa will face off and there could be another team added to the list.

No team will play a perfect season, but one team will be perfect for 21 days this spring and that team will bring home the national title.

That’s what this is all about.

If Colorado wants the best odds possible, it’s going to need to sweep at least one road trip between now and March. That’s the path to the top seed in the Pac-12 Tourney, and then a Pac-12 title, and then a No. 4 seed or better in the NCAA Tourney.

If the Buffs do that they won’t be an underdog until the 10th of the 21 days, at the earliest.

But there’s one more catch: They can’t lose at home again.

Colorado can play for a handful of splits and one sweep on the road, but that only works if Colorado takes care of business in Boulder.

Four home games remain, and next up are the Northern California teams next weekend.

Cal is rolling into town on Thursday and Stanford will follow on Saturday. One of those teams is .500 and the other is a conference title contender.

It doesn’t matter which is which because Colorado needs to beat both. If CU plays like it did against USC, neither will be a problem.