Rebounding: CU's Big 12 Tournament Grim Reaper
- Liam Howard
- 15 hours ago
- 3 min read
The Colorado Buffaloes’ loss to the Oklahoma State Cowboys in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament was a tale of the glass. Colorado was outrebounded 44-34 by a team missing its leading rebounder to injury, and it cost the Buffs their season.
The Buffaloes weren’t 100 percent either, though. Forward Sebastian Rancik recorded a team-leading 10 rebounds in the Buffaloes’ first meeting with the Cowboys on Feb. 21. The game also marked his second-straight game with double-digit rebounds and his third in a four-game stretch.
But before Rancik could contribute much more in the rebounding game, he suffered a concussion in practice on March 2. Since then, he’s missed three-straight games, including the Buffs’ loss to Oklahoma State.
While fellow forward Bangot Dak stepped up, recording eight rebounds and a team-high 22 points, he felt his team was at a major size disadvantage without Rancik.
“It just hurts us when we’ve got to go small,” Dak said postgame. “...Because we’ve got a 6’5” dude on a bigger dude, I feel like that’s the only problem.”
But Colorado head coach Tad Boyle seemed to interpret the Buffaloes’ struggles differently.
“Sebastian is 6’10”/6’11”, he does help us on the glass, there’s no question about that,” Boyle said. “But…we didn’t play [small] a lot tonight…a lot of times they were small when we were small, especially down the stretch.”
The Buffaloes rotated Dak, centers Elijah Malone, Fawaz ‘Tacko’ Ifaola and forward Alon Michaeli through the front court, but didn’t have two of them on the court at a time for the majority of the game. They rotated guards Josiah Sanders, Jalin Holland and Felix Kossaras in at the four for a combined 21:34.
Based on that number, Dak’s concerns seem valid, but they may both be right in different ways.
While Boyle mostly focused on defense when speaking about the lack of execution, the same can certainly be said about the team’s rebounding.
Sanders and Holland have been known for their athleticism this season, due to their ability to out-jump and rebound over much larger opponents. While Holland recorded seven rebounds, he did so rather recklessly, fouling out of the game. As for Sanders, he was boxed out effectively all night long, recording just two rebounds despite the amount of time he spent in the frontcourt.
Additionally, aside from Dak and Malone’s 14 combined rebounds, the Buffalo big men failed to execute on the glass. Ifaola and Michaeli failed to record a board in a combined 9:15 played.
This lack of success is all the more puzzling when it's considered that the Cowboys were missing their season-leading rebounder, center Parsa Fallah, due to an ACL tear for the fourth-straight game. While Fallah only recorded two rebounds the first time these teams met, the Cowboys are at a major size disadvantage without him at the very least.
The only Cowboys taller and heavier than Fallah are forwards Mekhi Ragland, who only averages 4.3 minutes per game this season, and Andrija Vukovic, who has been coming off the bench and averaging just 3.4 rebounds per game.
The Oklahoma State player who hurt the Buffs on the glass most consistently in the two meetings is guard Christian Coleman. Despite standing just 6’8” and only averaging 5.3 rebounds per game this season, he racked up nine boards in the Cowboys’ first meeting with the Buffs.
But even with that game’s film to prepare for the first-round matchup, Coleman only crashed the boards harder. The Buffaloes struggled mightily to box him out, as he recorded 14 clean rebounds with just one personal foul in the game.
Regardless of whether Dak and Boyle saw the issue differently or not, rebounding was Colorado’s Achilles heel against Oklahoma State. The Cowboys have thrived in that department all season, and their masterclass in execution was the executioner of Colorado’s season.
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