BOULDER — For Jamillah Lang, making history was about 50,000 times more fun than watching it from the edge of her seat.
“This story is amazing to watch,” the former CU basketball great laughed during the most-attended home women’s hoops game in program history, a 76-68 UCLA victory at the CU Events Center. “But the game is hard to watch because you just want to be out there.”
It proved even harder to hear. For two hours and change, Old Buffs money and new converged into a glorious wall of noise.
Peggy Coppom cheered from one end of the building. Shedeur Sanders, football star and Paris fashion icon, screamed from the other. Lang, the Big Eight Conference Player of the Year in 1994, the last time the Events Center had a house like this for a women’s basketball game, watched from just a few feet behind the home bench as the Bruins closed out the the first all-top-5 matchup CUEC annals on a foul-fueled 16-8 run.
“Well, they remind (me) a lot of us,” said Lang, who’d played on three NCAA tourney teams and one Elite Eight CU bunch from 1990-94. “Because (the current Buffs) have amazing point guard and they’ve got a really good inside game. And they’ve played with a lot of adversity in the past. And it’s just a lot of similarities.”
On a good day, and Friday was setting up to be one those until the zebras stole the final four minutes, the third-ranked Buffs, who fell at home for the first time, can beat you in about 17 different ways.
Mess with 6-foot-3 post partners Aaronette Vonleh and Quay Miller at your peril. Fearless guard Jaylyn Sherrod is a 5-7 dynamo who plays 6-8. Sherrod and Danish dervish Frida Formann took turns throwing haymakers, combining for 19 points in the first half against the No. 5 Bruins.
“Hard to find a weakness,” I said.
Lang’s eyes narrowed.
“Everybody,” she countered, “has a weakness.”
Her beloved Buffs proved her prophetic a few minutes later, appearing to wear down as the momentum and endorphins from the largest regular-season crowd in CU women’s hoops history — 11,338 — began to fade like a sugar crash. And four fouls late each on Formann and Sherrod sure as heck didn’t help.
“It’s being on the (big) stage,” Lang explained. “You know, it’s challenging because even we didn’t even know what we were in for. We knew how hard we’d worked. We knew how much intensity we put into it. But you really never know the the level until you get there.”
Friday was another level. And just the fifth CU women’s basketball sellout all-time, the Buffs’ first since March 17, 1995. The old record was 11,199, set during NCAA tourney tilts in 1994 and 1989.
“I mean, the atmosphere in here,” Lang said, “this is what it needs to be. This is what women’s basketball is all about.”
Ex-Grandview standout Lauren Betts, now anchoring the UCLA frontcourt, had the Buffs in her ears all night long. But it was when she finally got them out from between those same ears that the clouds began to part.
“(I figured), I can’t get mad at myself for not playing well in the first half,” said Betts, who put up 20 points and drained five of her last six attempts from the floor after a 3-for-10 first half. “I just have to move on.”
Instead of getting mad, she got even. And as UCLA coach Cori Close noted, the Bruins figured out a way, judo style, to start riding that CU noise instead of fighting it head-on.
“Their aggression is excellent,” Close said of the Buffs, who slipped to 15-2, 5-1 in Pac-12 play. “Usually the more aggressive team wins. (Friday) may be the best time that we were able to turn their aggression against them. I think you (either) let it happen to you, or you take it right at them.
“This is the best team we’ve played. They’re tough. Purposeful. They’re versatile. They keep coming at you.”
So does this league. With four top 10 squads, the Pac-12’s a complete meat-grinder, the kind you hope can callous both skin and soul. The third-ranked Buffs next host No. 6 USC on Sunday, which just got drubbed at No. 20 Utah after handing the fifth-ranked Bruins (15-1, 4-1 conference) their first defeat of the season.
“(Friday) was about mental toughness,” Close observed, “and being willing to win ugly. Period.”
And on this, Close and Lang sang in perfect unison. Despite Friday’s uphill climb, both think the Buffs, who’ve already taken down No. 10 LSU and No. 8 Stanford, still have another gear in them.
“(This season) going to go down in the books and it’s going to be amazing,” Lang said of the weeks to come. “They’re going to be in our seats one day as legends. It’s going to be amazing. They don’t even know yet.
“I didn’t even know it when I was playing basketball. And they have no idea how much of an impact they’re going to have on people.”
You could feel it Friday, though, from throbbing eardrums to the tiny hairs that stood up on the back of your neck every time Sherrod crashed the paint. If this be Madness, March can’t come quickly enough.