Defense at top of agenda as CU Buffs basketball hits lull in game schedule

Tad Boyle has revealed throughout the season s early stages he d prefer his new-look band to learn through winning Colorado no longer has that luxury The Buffaloes suffered their first loss of the season on Saturday in a rivalry battle at Colorado State that was loaded with spirit ability and offensive fireworks yet thin on anything resembling defense The same could be revealed of both sides but it was the Buffs on the wrong end of a - decision an outcome that resulted from CU s inability to follow the defensive script against a very good -point company in CSU The Rams finished -for- from the arc CSU guard Josh Pascarelli went -for- giving him a ridiculous -for- mark from long range in the past two games Yet Pascarelli s -for- -point performance in CSU s previous contest a neutral-floor win against South Florida helps explain the root of Boyle s postgame frustrations It was no secret the Rams take and make a high volume of -pointers And CU didn t take away the arc at any point What s frustrating to me is we came back and took control of the challenge Boyle noted of an - run that gave CU the first of three late four-point leads One thing I ll say about this about our guys competitive spirit and toughness is it s there You don t come back in an conditions like this and take the lead But we can t sustain it because we can t get stops We got nothing down the stretch You get a kill three straight stops down the stretch you win this event But we re not able to do it While the performance at CSU marked a new defensive low for the Buffs it only magnified the defensive lapses that have plagued CU throughout the season Often CU s dynamic offense has glossed over the defensive shortcomings But that wasn t the development at CSU which became the fourth opponent in nine games to shoot at least against the Buffs Shooting committing only six turnovers and scoring points almost inevitably is a recipe for success But even those impressive numbers weren t enough to overcome the Rams -pointers We just weren t locked-in on the scout CU freshman guard Isaiah Johnson disclosed Coach notified us before the encounter to take away -pointers and we just didn t execute that Colorado - will have ample practice time in the coming weeks to try to iron out the porous defense before the start of Big Conference play After playing the first nine games of the season in a little less than five weeks the competition schedule slows somewhat over the next month Following the CSU battle the Buffs play their final four nonconference games over a span of days before visiting Arizona State for the Big opener on Jan That run begins on Saturday at home against Texas-San Antonio p m ESPN You inevitably try to build on the positive things and improve the negative Boyle disclosed But the issue is the negative have been with us now for quite particular time And I m not saying we haven t made incremental improvements But we re not where we need to be collectively in terms of our pride