About two weeks ago, the Colorado Buffaloes women’s basketball team was riding high. Colorado dished out an eye-popping 32 assists while rolling past the Oregon Ducks on Feb. 9 and was the fourth-ranked team in the country.
Two losses later, the Buffaloes have fallen to No. 11 and must go on the road to face the No. 7 USC Trojans and superstar JuJu Watkins on Friday.
Colorado took its first matchup of the season against USC in Boulder on Jan. 21, coming away with a 63-59 win in a rough-and-tumble contest that saw Watkins foul out in the closing moments. Since that game, Watking is averaging over 30 points per game, aided by a 51-point performance at Stanford. The Buffs must slow Watkins down again if they want to leave Los Angeles with the win.
Colorado also must play better in the first half on Friday. CU faced halftime deficits of 20 and 15 points, respectively, in its past two games against Oregon State and Utah — both losses. While the Buffs came back and made each of those games interesting, those poor first halves were too much to overcome.
Friday’s game is set for an 8 p.m. MT tip on the Pac-12 Network.
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