This week has not started out well for Cal basketball.
Not only did the Golden Bears suffer their sixth straight defeat with a 59-46 loss to Colorado 59-46 on Thursday night in Boulder, Colo., but they also announced that their leading scorer, Devin Askew, is out for the rest of the season after undergoing sports-hiernia surgery on Wednesday.
The Bears were also without their other prized transfer, DeJuan Clayton, who was ill and did not play Thursday. He is with the team on the trip, and it is unclear whether he will play Sunday against Utah.
Askew is averaging 15.5 points, making him the only Cal player other than Lars Thiemann (10.5 points ) who was averaging in double figures heading into Thursday's game.
Thiemann scored just seven points against Colorado, which overcame Cal's 10-point first-half lead by limiting the Bears to 19 second-half points and forcing 12 of the Bears' 22 turnovers in the second half.
"We don't have enough firepower to get points on the board," Cal coach Mark Fox said afterward, "so we've got to get to the line and get some easy ones and we didn't do enough of that tonight."
A 13-0 run by Colorado early in the second half turned the game around.
"We have to play with a tougher mentality on the road," Fox said. "We played about 25 good minutes, and then they made a run and we collapsed for five or six minutes."
Cal (3-19, 2-9 Pac-12) used its 10th different starting lineup this season against Colorado, which lost to Cal 80-76 in their previous meeting this season. Although the Bears used 10 players Thursday, Colorado got better play from its reserves, outscoring Cal 25-10 in bench points.
And the Bears' depth will be limited the rest of the season with Askew gone, although the Bears did not experience much success when Askew played. He had missed eight games before Thursday, and the Bears were 0-13 in the games in which he played.
Askew has at least one more season of eligibility left and may have two more seasons. Cal played just one game this season in which both Clayton and Askew were available, and the Bears lost that one.
Colorado (13-11, 5-8) had lost five of its previous six games, and made just 4 of its first 22 shots on Thursday. But the Buffaloes rallied behind the scoring of Tristan da Silva, who scored 17 of his 20 points in the second half and scored Colorado's first 12 points after halftime.
The Bears still held a 34-28 lead with 16:26 left in the game, but the Buffaloes then took control by scoring 13 straight points, with the first eight points in that run coming from da Silva. Colorado pushed its lead to 15 points before coasting home.
"I definitely think that the fatigue factor was apparent in the last probably 12 minutes of the game," Fox said, "whether that's altitude of lack of depth or a combination of the two."
The highlight for Cal was provided by 6-foot-6 Marsalis Roberson, who came from nowhere to make this fabulous block:
Cal held a 10-point lead with 2:38 left in the first half, and at that point Colorado was just 4-for-22 from the field (18.2%). But the Buffaloes scored the final seven points of the half and trailed the Bears 27-24 at intermission.
Colorado finished the first half with a season-low 24 points and a season-low 25% shooting from the floor. Cal was not much better, shooting 33.3% from the field in the first 20 minutes.
"I thought under the circumstances we competed really well in the first half," Fox said. "We turned it over entirely too much to win on the road, and some of that is due to the disjointed lineups we were forced to play."
Da Silva took control early in the second half, helping Colorado to dominate on its home court.
Kuany Kuany was the only Cal player to score in double figures, coming up with 10 points, although he was 2-for-10 from the field.
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