Home has been sweet to the Colorado women’s basketball team this season, and the Buffaloes are hoping that continues on Saturday.

After an 0-2 road trip last week, the Buffs return to the court on Saturday as No. 10 Kansas State visits the CU Events Center (1 p.m., ESPN+).

“It’s huge,” senior Frida Formann said of the opportunity in front of the Buffs. “I think it’s really important that we show up super ready to play against such a good team. They’re experienced, they know how to win on the road. But, I mean, we’re really good at home, so no matter what we are on the road, we’ve got to protect what we have going on here, which I think is really good.

“So definitely an opportunity we have to take advantage of.”

Aiming for a fourth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament, the Buffs (12-6, 3-4 Big 12) have dealt with some adversity in their first year in a new conference.

While most of the adversity has hit on the road — CU is 3-0 at home in Big 12 play and 0-4 on the road — there are some kinks that need to be ironed out regardless of the venue.

“We know that we’re capable of being successful,” head coach JR Payne said. “We watch the film and see the areas that each of us can improve just a little bit, and we know that we can be successful and continue to win games. So I think just really trying to stay united and focus on the controllables.”

A common thread for the Buffs, even at home, is starting strong and fizzling late.

The Buffs have taken the lead into the second quarter in each of the past six games and have had second-half leads in four straight games, but they are 2-4 in that stretch. Late struggles were magnified in last Saturday’s 65-59 loss at Cincinnati. CU led by 12 with 12 minutes left and got outscored 32-14 the rest of the way.

“Once it kind of gets a little rough and we can’t really string together some baskets, then it’s really hard for us to come back into that first-quarter mode,” Formann said. “So that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about this week, like how to bounce back into that.”

Although CU has 10 new players this year, Formann said the message from the past few years is the same, in that it has to be a collective effort.

“We have what we have,” she said. “I think it’s more of just figuring out, still, how we can make those runs, how the pieces that we have can kind of work together. Because it’s always been like that in CU basketball; we don’t have a 20-points per game player, so it’s kind of figuring out who’s hitting. Everyone has to be aggressive from the jump because it could be their night.”

Fundamentally, the Buffs are still finding their way in the new conference and still adjusting to how the Big 12 is officiated compared to the Pac-12 over the previous 13 years.

“Every conference does have a style, and we have to just keep learning and keep sort of owning that for ourselves,” Payne said. “That’s our responsibility to adjust when we see things that are happening or not happening.”

During Big 12 play, CU has committed the most fouls in the conference (21.43 per game), compared to 17.3 per game the past two years in the Pac-12. On the flip side of that, CU isn’t aggressive offensively and drawing its own fouls.

In seven conference games, the Buffs’ opponents are shooting 20.9 free throws per game, compared to just 12.3 (lowest in the Big 12) for the Buffs. Last Saturday, Cincinnati was 19-for-26 at the line, while CU was just 2-for-4.

“We’ve been working all week on how to draw fouls; not flopping, but how to draw contact,” Payne said. “We are not getting to the free throw line. There’s statistical things that are not in our favor. Even though there’s a lot of them that are in our favor, we’re trying to attack those that are not.

“We’re trying to be strategic on how can we get our good shooters to the free throw line more? It’s on the front of our brains, and we’re trying to work on it.”

CU is confident it has the tools to get on track and fix the issues.

“It’s not like you need some major overhaul of system or anything like that,” Payne said. “We just need to fix those areas and we can be successful.”