Buffs Need Upperclassmen To Continue Big Contributions
January 08, 2018 | Men's Basketball, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — One of the main storylines surrounding the Colorado Buffaloes all season has been the development of CU's freshman class.
That development found the spotlight Monday when point guard McKinley Wright IV was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week after leading the 10-6 Buffs to wins over No. 4 Arizona State and No. 14 Arizona last week.
Wright's play last week — he averaged 17.5 points, 7.5 assists and 3.5 rebounds — was no doubt a key to Colorado's head-turning victories.
But the performance of CU's freshman wasn't the biggest difference between the Buffs who beat ASU and UA and the Buffs who lost at Oregon State and Oregon just a week earlier.
Rather, the biggest difference in Boulder was the performance of Buffs seniors George King and Dominique Collier and junior Namon Wright. After sub-par performances on the road, CU's upperclassmen bounced back and delivered in a big way at home.
"They played extremely well this weekend," CU head coach Tad Boyle said. "I wouldn't say they carried us but they certainly set the tone in terms of their consistent nature on both ends of the floor. When you have that and you add talented freshmen to that, you can have weekends like we just had."
In the two games in Oregon, Colorado's three upperclassmen combined to score 53 points, grab 21 rebounds and hand out five assists. Against the Arizona schools, they combined for 80 points, 39 rebounds and 16 assists.
"You expect the up-and-down nature to come from the freshmen, the up-and-down play," Boyle said. "You really need your upperclassmen to give you stability. When those guys have done that, we've been pretty good."
Namon Wright may have had his best back-to-back games as a Buff in the recent homestand. While the transfer from Missouri had eight double-figure scoring games prior to tallying 19 points against ASU and 14 against UA, he was far more effective on the boards than any game previously. He opened the homestand with seven rebounds against ASU — his high as a Buff — before surpassing that with eight against UA.
King, meanwhile, had 20 rebounds in the two games while Collier was a supremely efficient 9-for-14 from the field for 25 points in the two games, along with handing out eight assists.
"We look up to those older guys," McKinley Wright said. "To have them come out early and set the example for us motivates us and gets us going, especially for us being so young."
Now the question is whether the Buffs, now 2-2 in Pac-12 play, can take the effort that produced two home wins with them on the road. Colorado travels to Los Angeles this week for a pair of games, beginning with a Wednesday tilt at USC (8 p.m., FS1), followed by a Saturday game at UCLA (8:30 p.m., Pac-12 Networks).
"We haven't won a game on the road this year. I don't know what that feels like as a freshman," McKinley Wright said. "We talked about that today. Some of the older guys know what a road win feels like and I don't. This week I'm looking forward to the opportunity to play the LA schools and hopefully getting our first road win."
PAC-12 PARITY: After just two weeks of play, every team in the Pac-12 has at least one conference loss, and only one team — Washington State (0-3) — doesn't have at least once conference win.
"I'm not really surprised," Boyle said. "There's a lot of talent in this league. We lost 14 first-round draft picks in the Pac-12. To think that we're going to come out in November and just be killers on a national scale … but we've got some teams and some coaches who get better as the year goes on. You get into Pac-12 play and see some 'upsets,' I don't consider them upsets. It's conference play. We've got some teams that are going to be a heck of a lot better come late February and March than they were in November. I don't know if we'll get credit for it or not. That all plays out when the (NCAA) selection show happens. But I do know there's a lot of good young players in this league and we have a handful of them, but so does everybody else."
FIRST PAC-12 HONOR: Wright's Pac-12 Player of the Week honor is the first time a CU freshman has won a conference honor since Chauncey Billups did it in his freshman season in Boulder in 1995-96.
"There's a lot of good players in this league so to be the player of the week is huge for me," Wright said. "When I came here I just wanted to come and do whatever I can to help this team win. Coach Boyle told me as a freshman I have an opportunity to help this team from the start. He was going to give me the keys to the car so I took it and I ran with it. I'm just trying to do whatever I can to help this team."
Wright is currently on the Pac-12 leaderboard severa, categories, including 14th in scoring (16.2 ppg), second in assists (5.3 apg) and 10th in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.6).
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
