How To Watch, Game Preview and Game Thread: #9 UCLA Bruins at Colorado Buffaloes

Jan 23, 2022

Who will step up and lead the Bruins tonight against Colorado? Will it be Johnny Juzang? Or, will it be someone else? (Photo Credit: Scott Chandler/uclabruins.com)

When the team returns home for Tuesday’s game against the Arizona Wildcats, fans will once again be welcome to attend Bruin home games at Pauley. So that should help pump up the team. Bruin head coach Mick Cronin has been pretty vocal about the fact that he thinks it’s ridiculous that the Rams are playing in front of crowds of 80,000 at So-Fi while his team is restricted to just family members. And, he’s right. It is ridiculous.

But the Bruins now need to focus on beating on tough Colorado squad which fell just three points short of forcing Southern Cal into overtime on Thursday night.

Part of the reason for that is that the Buffs have only lost games to Tennessee, Arizona and Southern Cal since Colorado lost to the Bruins last month.

Starting Five

The starting five for Colorado looks to be almost the same as when the Buffs visited Westwood last month. There was one change to the starting lineup when CU faced the Trojans. Starting guard Elijah Parquet did not play due to an undisclosed injury.

And, Colorado head coach Tad Boyle wasn’t saying much about the injury. An article by Pat Rooney of Colorado Daily quotes Boyle:

We’ll see. I don’t know. I don’t have any feel for that. I don’t know if he’ll be out a day or a week or two weeks or a month. I have no idea.

So, if Boyle knows more than that he’s not talking, but I expect sophomore guard Nique Clifford to start in Parquet’s place again. On Thursday in his first start for the Buffs, Clifford scored five points and added seven rebounds, two assists, two blocked shots, and three turnovers over 34 minutes of playing time.

So, the Bruins will probably face Clifford instead of Parquet, but we won’t know until game time.

The rest of the starting lineup looks to be the same. Senior forward Evan Battey will play a big role in the game for the Buffs despite the fact that his scoring has dropped off during conference play. When CU came to Pauley, Battey was averaging 14.9 points per game. His average has fallen to just 12.2 ppg since.

Sophomore guard Keeshawn Barthelemy is another Buffalo whose stats have fallen since non-conference play ended. Barthelemy is now down to an average of 10.9 points per game from the 14.6 scoring average he had last month.

Meanwhile, Jabari Walker has remained one of the most consistent guys on the Buffaloes. His scoring average has fallen from 13.9 to 13.1 ppg to lead the team in scoring.

Tristan da Silva, whom the Bruins were able to shut down last month, has been even more consistent than Walker. His scoring average is 8.8 ppg, down from 8.9 last month. His rebounding average of 3.4 rpg is also close to what it was last month when it was 3.6 rpg.

Outlook

Overall, I expect tonight’s to be closer than last month’s game in LA. The Bruins are still finding their seas legs after their COVID break. Meanwhile, the Buffs’ COVID break was shorter than UCLA’s and that extra time has allowed the Buffs to start to gel.

I still think the Bruins will win tonight, but I do think tonight’s game will be a lot closer than the game in LA. In fact, it’s possible that UCLA will be so winded from the altitude that the Buffs could surprise everyone and win tonight’s game.

Listen to the Game With TMB!

TuneIn.com now has UCLA’s games listed as “premium” content. So, rather than using TuneIn, you can just listen through the official website like we have done with the small sports for a long time in order to listen to Josh Lewin and Tracy Murray call today’s game, but why would you want to? Yes, you guessed it! National treasure Bill Walton is working the game tonight with Ted Robinson on the Pac-12 Networks. How could you not want to listen to Big Red? But if you don’t, just be sure to right-click on it so that you can open up another tab and have it going while you chat in the comments below. Listen to today’s game online.

In the meantime, here’s how to watch today’s game:

This is your #9 UCLA Bruins at the Colorado Buffaloes game thread.

#9 UCLA Men’s Basketball (12-2, 4-1)

Opponent: Colorado Buffaloes (12-5, 4-3)
Series Record: UCLA leads, 15-7
When: 6:00 pm PT, Saturday, January 22, 2022
Where: CU Events Center, Boulder, CO
TV: Pac-12 Networks National, Los Angeles, and Mountain with Ted Robinson and Bill Walton
Live Stream: Pac-12.com and the Pac-12 Now app
Radio:
AM 570 in Los Angeles with Josh Lewin and Tracy Murray
Satellite Radio: SiriusXM Ch. 84 (UCLA Call)
Audio Stream:
uclabruins.com
Live Stats: UCLA StatBroadcast
Game Notes:
UCLA
Colorado

Go Bruins!!!

Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.

188 Comments