The curse of the first-round bye was real during this year’s Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament, and the No. 3 seed Colorado Buffaloes were the last top-four team to fall as No. 7 Washington State pulled off the semifinals upset, 61-49, on Friday night.
WSU raced out to a 20-6 first-half lead with the Buffaloes unable to hit many shots. Colorado was able to claw its way back to tie the game at 38 at the end of the third quarter before the Buffs ran out of gas in the fourth, ending the comeback bid.
With the game tied at 41 with 7:40 left in the fourth, Washington State went on a 9-0 run to take control of the contest. As I mentioned, Colorado could not hit its shots last night and was just 37% from the field and 22.2% from three. Aaronette Vonleh was a bright spot, scoring 18 points on 9-of-11 shooting, meaning the rest of the team shot 11-of-43 (25.58%) for the night.
Washington State will now face No. 5 UCLA in Sunday’s championship game.
Colorado will now wait for the selection committee to announce its NCAA Tournament seed. CU is projected to be a top-four seed and if that comes true, the Buffaloes will host their first and potentially second game at the CU Events Center.
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