D’Shawn Schwartz knocked down a clutch winning 3-pointer during his time with the Colorado Buffaloes.
He connected on another in dramatic fashion to keep Team Colorado alive in The Basketball Tournament.
Team Colorado twice wiped out sizeable deficits, and Schwartz sent the former Buffaloes basketball stars into the Sweet 16 of the $1 million winner-take-all TBT with a 3-pointer that clinched a 65-61 victory against the top-seeded Aftershocks, a squad of former Wichita State standouts playing on their home floor.
Team Colorado returns to the TBT Sweet 16 for the first time since 2017. The fifth-seeded former Buffs will play second-seeded Mass Street, a squad of Kansas alums, on Wednesday night (7 p.m. MT, Fox Sports 1).
Team Colorado trailed by nine in the first half and by 11 in the third quarter, but both times the former Buffs made quick work of erasing the deficit. Colorado trailed 26-17 in the second quarter but finished the half on a 16-6 run, scoring the final eight in a row to take a 33-32 lead at the break.
Aftershocks enjoyed a hot start to the second half, scoring the first 12 points of the third quarter to build an 11-point lead. Once again, however, Team Colorado didn’t flinch, scoring 17 consecutive points to take a 52-46 lead.
The former Buffs led 57-55 when the Elam Ending was enacted, setting the target winning score at 65. Former Cherokee Trail star Jaizec Lottie, who turned in another strong game off the bench, opened the Elam Ending with a 3-pointer off a feed from Schwartz. A pair of Aftershocks buckets cut Colorado’s lead to one point before a George King tip-in gave the former Buffs a 62-59 lead.
Once again, Aftershocks pulled within one point, but after King was able to collect an offensive rebound, he fired a kick-out pass to an open Schwartz, who drained the winner.
Former NBA veteran Andre Roberson finished with 22 points and nine rebounds, both game-highs, while King finished with 12 points and six rebounds. Led by 11 points from Lottie, Team Colorado’s reserves came up big, outscoring the Aftershocks’ bench 24-12. Team Colorado finished with 17 turnovers, but it shot .424 overall while holding Aftershocks to a .379 mark. The former Buffs also posted a 40-33 rebounding advantage.
Schwartz, who knocked down a winning 3-pointer at the overtime buzzer to defeat a 13th-ranked Dayton team during the 2019-20 season, scored a game-high 21 points in Team Colorado’s first-round win on Saturday, but he was just 1-for-8 before knocking down his winner.
