Evidently, voters for the weekly AP Top 25 men’s basketball poll found Colorado’s win against fourth-ranked Oregon far more impressive than Sunday’s home loss against Oregon State was disconcerting.
It didn’t dissuade voters for the Pac-12 Conference Player of the Week award, either.
Despite the collapse at home in a Pac-12 showdown against Oregon State, the Buffs re-entered the weekly Top 25 on Monday, checking in at No. 25 with 81 points in the vote after leading the others receiving votes category last week with 74 points.
Additionally, junior point guard McKinley Wright IV was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week on Monday after about 72 dominant minutes against Oregon and Oregon State and eight tough ones down the stretch of Sunday’s loss against Oregon State.
It is the second career Pac-12 Player of the Week honor for Wright, who also won the award two years ago as a freshman. It is the 11th Player of the Week award for CU since the Buffs joined the Pac-12.
Wright was the catalyst of the Buffs’ upset win on Thursday against fourth-ranked Oregon, scoring 11 of his 21 points over the final 4 minutes, 11 seconds while adding eight assists and five rebounds. Wright scored 14 points with 10 assists and seven rebounds Sunday against Oregon State, though he committed three turnovers during the Beavers’ game-closing 24-5 run that saddled the Buffs with a bad loss.
Wright shot 12-for-22 in the two games with a 10-for-13 mark on free throws, and he surpassed a number of personal milestones during the first Pac-12 series of the season. With 18 assists in the two games, Wright increased his career total to 413 to move into fifth place all-time at CU. His assists-points double-double against OSU was the sixth double-double of that nature in his career, tying Jay Humphries for the most in team history. (It was Wrightap eighth career double-double overall.)
Wright also became just the second CU player, after Donnie Boyce, to collect 1,000 points, 400 rebounds, and 400 assists in his career. Despite the rough finish against Oregon State, Wright still improved his assist-to-turnover rate to 1.70 going into Sunday’s home date against Utah (4 p.m., ESPNU). He joined Josh Scott and Askia Booker as CU’s only two-time winners of the Pac-12 Player of the Week award.
The Buffs were ranked for four weeks between early November and early December before dropping out following a Dec. 10 home loss against Northern Iowa.
CU has now been ranked in six weeks so far in the 2019-20 season, matching the 2013-14 team for the most in coach Tad Boyle’s 10-year tenure. The program record is eight weeks in the AP Top 25 during the 1996-97 season. The 1968-69 team, which will be showcased during CU’s annual basketball alumni weekend later this week, was ranked for seven weeks.
While the Buffs certainly will take the national recognition, the far more damaging reality of Sunday’s defeat was CU’s dip in the NET rankings. The Buffs entered the OSU game at No. 18, but the home defeat dropped CU to No. 32 going into Monday’s action around the nation.
“The challenge is to get these guys to understand that nothing is going to be given to them,” Boyle said following Sunday’s defeat. “I talk to them a lot about earning respect, and what we’ve done after the last three or four games we’ve played to earn respect. And how quickly that can go away. We earned some by beating Dayton and playing the way we did against Iona and then beating Oregon in here. And now we just stubbed our toe again, just like we did against Northern Iowa. You eat what you kill. Thatap the challenge — to get them to understand that.”