It’s a routine that can be frustrating for any team, and certainly maddening for any head coach. Get rolled on the road. Return home. Regroup. Recalibrate. Rinse and repeat. It’s a cycle the Colorado men’s basketball team is mired within, and one that continued in ugly fashion on Wednesday nig ht with an 86-67 defeat at Baylor. Sometimes games are closer than the final score indicates. In this case, the performance was even worse than a 19-point final margin indicated. The Buffaloes, though, will get another chance to reset and get back in the win column on Saturday, when they host Arizona State at the CU Events Center (7:30 p.m., ESPN2). It is a similar scenario to the one that CU responded to at the beginning of the week, when it posted a thorough 26-point win at home against TCU on the heels of a 30-point beatdown at Iowa State. “You can’t look ahead in this league. If you look ahead you’ll get ulcers and you’ll lose sleep. It’s hard enough to sleep during the season as it is,” CU head coach Tad Boyle said. “We’ve got Arizona State, who’s playing better now. This is the time of year you’d better strap it on, because February is probably the hardest month of the year from a mental standpoint. So we’ve got to figure out a way to beat Arizona State on Saturday. That’s my only thoughts right now.” While poor starts have been less of an issue at home, the opening halves have been crippling for CU in each of the past two road games. The routs at Iowa State and Baylor may have been scripted slightly differently — ISU ambushed the Buffs with an early 30-1 run, while the Bears built their 24-point halftime more methodically — yet the blueprint was similar as a CU team that has been a low-turnover club throughout the season fumbled its way through the first 20 minutes of both games. The Buffs finished with 10 turnovers at Iowa State and Baylor, certainly a total they’ll take in any conference road game. But at ISU, Colorado committed seven turnovers in the first half. The Buffs committed nine of their 10 turnovers in the first half at Baylor. “Handling pressure. Iowa State pressured us, and Baylor pressured us,” Boyle said. “We had nine turnovers in the first half (at Baylor), only one in the second half. We did a better job. But we have been a team thus far who has not been able to handle pressure very well. We got better as the game went on. But the pressure wanes when you’re up 30. “So we’ve got to handle pressure offensively, I think would be the big thing. And then having some pride on defense. Those two things I would say, if you look at Iowa State and Baylor first halves common denominators, that would be it.” The Buffs still have a chance to win two out of three in a week Boyle called critical to avoiding any spiral toward the Big 12 basement. CU (13-10, 3-7 Big 12) broke an 11-game losing streak in true road games with a Big 12-opening win at ASU on Jan. 3, but the Sun Devils recorded a road win at Utah on Wednesday night after losing five of its previous six games. “We’ve got to have two days of good practice,” CU guard Jalin Holland said. “Being locked in, being focused, being prepared mentally, and we’ll probably have a good game.” ...read more read less