KANSAS CITY, Mo. >> There is no requirement to play pretty basketball in the postseason. Sometimes, it’s not even necessary to play particularly well.

That’s a good thing for the Colorado women’s basketball team, which certainly didn’t collect style points on Wednesday but did earn a victory, 66-58, against Houston in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament at T-Mobile Center.

“The message in the locker room was, at this time of the year, you win the game,” CU head coach JR Payne said. “Everybody uses the phrase, ‘survive and advance,’ and we certainly survived, and we certainly are advancing.”

The ninth-seeded Buffaloes (19-11) overcame a whopping 33 turnovers — the second-most by a CU team in the past 40 years — to knock out 16th-seeded Houston (5-25).

Lior Garzon had 21 points and Jade Masogayo 14 to help the Buffs move into Thursday’s second round against Arizona.

Turnovers have been an issue for much of the season for the Buffs, but they reached a new low against the Cougars.

CU led by 18, 50-32, with 9:46 to play, but then committed 14 fourth-quarter turnovers as it struggled against Houston’s pressure. The Cougars sliced the CU lead to five, 63-58, on a Laila Blair four-point play with 25.6 seconds to play.

“They just kind of sped us up at the end,” Masogayo said. “They were pretty aggressive defensively, so we just have to clean up when it comes to that.”

Payne praised Houston’s aggressiveness but said that was aided by poor decision-making on passes by the Buffs at times.

“We definitely got rattled,” she said. “I mean, I can’t hide the fact that we were pretty rattled. I also think in some ways, maybe that’s a blessing, because maybe we now can really focus on that, because we certainly will see pressure tomorrow as well.”

Until the frantic finish, the Buffs were in control most of the day. They shot the ball well (44.9%) and crushed the Cougars on the boards (48-22). They also got a clutch performance from Garzon, who scored 18 of her points after halftime, including going 6-for-6 at the free-throw line in the last 50 seconds.

“Lior is our best free-throw shooter, but down the stretch, those were really, really important free throws,” Payne said. “You have to be able to shed all the frustration of whatever is going on and be able to focus and knock that down, and Lior did a great job of that.”