LARAMIE, Wyo.—There’s another Colorado team making a run in the postseason.
Brittany Spears scored 23 points and grabbed nine rebounds as Colorado beat Wyoming 70-58 in the third round of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament on Thursday night.
Colorado (18-15) advances to play Southern Cal in the quarterfinals.
First-year Buffaloes coach Linda Lappe spoke proudly of how her team played on the road in front of a hostile crowd of 7,247 fans in UW’s Arena-Auditorium.
“This is a tough place to play,” Lappe said. “I told our team coming in that only tough teams can win in this place. You can see why, it got so loud in that second half. I thought our players stepped up and never let the lead go, and I think that was huge to kind of keep the momentum.”
Spears, an All-Big 12 first team selection this season as a senior, scored 19 of her points in the first half to help Colorado to an 11-point halftime advantage. The Buffaloes would never relinquish the lead despite Wyoming closing to within 3 points in the second half.
“When you’re first team Big 12 that speaks volumes of how talented you are,” Wyoming coach Joe Legerski said. “And we knew we were going to have a tough matchup and how we had to play.”
Sophomore guard Chucky Jeffery added 16 points and five assists, and freshman guard Brittany Wilson contributed 15 points for the Buffaloes, who shot 50 percent from the field (25-50).
Wyoming (24-9) was led by senior forward Hillary Carlson’s 27 points, 11 rebounds and five assists.
Colorado gained a 39-28 lead at the half, but the Cowgirls closed to within 53-50 on a basket by Carlson at the 8:40 mark.
But Spears answered with a basket to start a 10-1 run that killed the rally, and the Buffaloes hit 7-of-8 free throws in the last 2 minutes to seal the win.
“We wasn’t worried at all because we had the lead the whole game,” Spears said. “We just knew we had to play defense, keep our hands up and stop fouling and stopping the clock.”
Senior Aubrey Vandiver added 15 points and eight rebounds for the Cowgirls, who shot 31.5 percent from the field (17-54), including 3-of-16 3-pointers.
“I know their athleticism bothered us a little bit, but we just rushed some shots,” Vandiver said.
Lappe said her team focused on trying to limit Wyoming’s long range shooting.
“Our goal coming in was to keep them to five 3s or less, and we did that with three,” she said. “We’re really good when we play with our hands high, and I thought we discouraged a lot of their passes, a lot of their 3-point attempts.”
Legerski likewise knew the Cowgirls had to shoot the ball well.
“We knew going into the game that there was some mismatches that didn’t work in our favor and you just try to hope that you have a great shooting night to overcome that, but we didn’t tonight,” he said.
