Colorado and West Virginia are both in need of a bounceback game when they clash in a Big 12 matchup on Saturday in Morgantown, W.Va.
After a pair of wins to open Big 12 play, the Buffaloes (12-5, 2-2 Big 12) have dropped two straight games. They hung tight with No. 14 Texas Tech in a 73-71 home loss last Saturday before falling behind 10-0 in a 77-68 road loss to Cincinnati on Wednesday.
West Virginia (11-6, 2-2) was routed by No. 7 Houston 77-48 in a wire-to-wire loss on Tuesday. With less than five minutes left in the first half, the Mountaineers trailed 28-5.
The Buffaloes trailed 43-25 at halftime and also never led against the Bearcats. Leading scorer Isaiah Johnson (16.1 points per game) has come off the bench every game this season. The freshman guard racked up 18 points against Cincinnati. Johnson is making 51.7% of his field-goal attempts and shooting 45.6% from 3-point range.
Colorado coach Tad Boyle likes Johnson in a sixth-man role but also wouldn’t rule out shaking up the Buffaloes’ rotation and moving him into the starting lineup at some point.
“Isaiah is a good player. There’s no doubt about it,” Boyle said. “He plays starter’s minutes, so it’s not a minutes issue. I think it works better for our team from a scoring standpoint, because we’ve got guys that struggle to score coming off the bench. He doesn’t. So he gives us kind of a punch coming off the bench.”
While West Virginia leading scorer Honor Huff (17.2 ppg) was held to 13 points against the Cougars, DJ Thomas came off the bench to lead the Mountaineers with 16 points. The Mountaineers are a perfect 11-0 on their home court, where they knocked off then-No. 22 Kansas 86-75 last Saturday.
“I thought our togetherness was good even in the midst of a difficult game,” West Virginia coach Ross Hodge said. “We had difficult stretches, but our communication during huddles and timeouts was good enough. What you would like to get, from a visual standpoint, is if someone was watching your team play, they wouldn’t know if you were up or down just by judging your body language.”
