By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
Point guard Barrington Hargress scored 10 of his 23 points in the first six minutes of the second half Saturday in Boulder, allowing the Big 12’s Colorado Buffaloes to pull away from the UTSA Roadrunners in an 88-64 victory.
Colorado (9-1) led by three points at intermission and then unleashed Hargress, a transfer from UC Riverside, to kick-start its high-scoring offense.
UTSA (4-6) couldn’t keep pace as the 6-foot-1 guard opened the second half with a three-pointer and then added a jumper and another three, all in the first three minutes.
Hargress followed with a layup, pushing Colorado’s lead to 14 points at the 14:01 mark. The Buffaloes led by as many as 27 points late in the game.
For the Roadrunners, guard Jamir Simpson produced another strong game with 20 points, six rebounds and five assists. Brent Moss and Daniel Akitoby supplied spark off the bench, with Moss scoring 11 and Akitoby 10.
UTSA has now lost three straight, all by more than 20 points. On the last day of November, the South Alabama Jaguars played zone defense primarily and won 82-58 at the Convocation Center.
Alabama, the 12th-ranked team in the nation, soundly defeated UTSA 97-55 last weekend in Tuscaloosa. Now, Colorado has piled on, using 62.2 percent shooting in the second half to win going away.
Coming in shooting 52 percent from the field and 41 percent from three, the Buffaloes nearly reached those numbers. They shot 49 percent for the game and 39 percent (9 of 22) behind the arc.
In areas of improvement, the Roadrunners played well defensively in the first half, holding a team that averages 88 a game to 35 points. In addition, they shot the ball better, hitting 39 percent and getting substantive contributions off the bench.
But it wasn’t enough to stop the program’s long losing streak against power conference competition. The loss was UTSA’s 30th straight against teams from the biggest revenue-producing conferences in the nation.
The Roadrunners haven’t won against a team from one of the financial majors since November of 2009 when they claimed a victory in Iowa City against the Big Ten’s Iowa Hawkeyes.
Records
UTSA 4-6
Colorado 9-1
Coming up
UTSA at Southern Cal, Wednesday, 8 p.m.
Notable
UTSA coach Austin Claunch said on the team’s radio broadcast that the game got away from his team early in the second half primarily because of some empty offensive possessions.
“Against good teams, if you take bad shots, and you don’t move (the ball), or you’re stagnant, they’re going to punish you on the other end, and that’s what happened,” Claunch said.
In the first eight minutes of the game, the Roadrunners held a surprising 13-12 lead. They were within one of two possessions for the remainder of the half.
“First 20 minutes, probably the best we’ve played this year,” Claunch said, “and the second 20, we got to figure out why that happened.”