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What’s gone so wrong in Boulder?
What the hell is happening in Boulder, Colorado?
The Colorado Buffaloes, a proud hoops program that has found consistent success in 14 seasons under coach Tad Boyle, has now hit an unthinkable low. Now 0-8 in Big 12 and an overall record of 9-10, this Buffaloes team can’t find a way to stop their own bleeding.
Granted, expectations this season were low from the get-go. CU lost all of their top six rotation players, either to the NBA or the transfer portal. With a brand new squad in Boulder, the focus of this season was always to give playing time and developmental opportunities to youngsters like Bangot Dak, Assane Diop, RJ Smith, Sebastian Rancik and Felix Kossaras.
However, nobody expected Colorado to be THIS bad this season. After beating defending back-to-back national champs and second-ranked UConn in Maui, fans started to get on board and believe again, but the Buffs have proceeded to fall off a cliff since their trip to paradise.
That begs the question: What has gone so wrong in Boulder? Why is this team so bad?
Frankly, there are a lot of reasons that the Buffs have been struggling. No one thing is leading to Colorado’s winless start to Big 12 play. Instead, a myriad of smaller issues have led to CU’s lack of success.
Answering that question will require a long, complicated answer, and it will take a lot of time. Luckily for you, dear reader, to paraphrase the great Deion Sanders:
“I got time today.”
Turnovers, turnovers and more turnovers...
If one thing hurts the Buffs the most, it’s their insistence on turning the ball over.
So far this season, CU is averaging 15.1 turnovers per game. That gives Colorado the rank of 348 out of 364 Division I teams, making them the 16th worst team in the country in turnovers per game and the worst Power Six squad in the category as well.
After almost every game this season, Boyle has stated in his presser:
“We invent new ways to turn the ball over,”
He isn’t wrong, either. If you sit down and watch a Colorado basketball game, it’s a nearly surefire bet that you’re going to see some wacky giveaways. 50 mph passes rocketed out of bounds when no Buff is within 20 feet of the ball, bounce-passes directly to the numbers of an opposing team’s player, the ball slipping out of the carrier’s hands in transition, you name it. If “Shaqtin’ a Fool” did a college version, the Buffs would have some pretty killer segments this year.
Turnovers have been a consistent issue for the Buffs in Tad Boyle’s 15-year tenure, with the 2023-24 team that set a program record with 26 single-season wins notably also struggling in the turnover column.
The difference between last year and this year is that Colorado doesn’t have the talent to make up for their mistakes, which leads to the next point...
Colorado doesn’t have their “guy” to fall back on
Most Colorado teams in the Tad Boyle era have had a clear best player the squad could lean on when the going got tough.
CU had Alec Burks and Carlon Brown in the early 2010s, then Derrick White and Spencer Dinwiddie in the mid-2010s, followed by Evan Battey and McKinley Wright in the late 2010s, and now Tristan da Silva and KJ Simpson in the early 2020s.
After losing the likes of da Silva, Simpson, J’Vonne Hadley, Cody Williams, Eddie Lampkin and Luke O’Brien after the 2023-24 season, CU was put in a position in which they’d have no clear go-to guy for 2024-25.
To Tad’s credit, he did all he could with the resources given to him to combat that. Colorado brought in a promising high school recruiting class with local standout Andrew Crawford and international prospects Felix Kossaras and Sebastian Rancik all committing to play in Boulder. Rancik and Kossaras have looked good when they’ve hit the floor this season, while Crawford has elected to redshirt, but they’re all still freshmen and need development.
Tad also did his best with CU’s shoestring NIL budget in the transfer portal, snagging familiar Pac-12 foe Andrej Jakimovski from Washington State and two stars at the lower division of college ball with Trevor Baskin from D-II Colorado Mesa and Elijah Malone from NAIA Grace College in Indiana.
While Baskin, Malone and Jakimovski have all shown promise in spurts this season, they’re no Derrick White or Dalton Knecht. Jakimovski profiles more as a solid role player, while Malone and Baskin both lack experience playing basketball at the DI level, let alone in a top-two conference in the nation.
Colorado’s promising youngsters from last season, namely Bangot Dak and Assane Diop, are still developing and unpolished. Dak and Diop both barely saw game action in 2023-34 and are being given a sizeable workload for the first time. It typically takes Boyle two seasons to develop his players into stars and Diop and Dak are almost there. It’s undeniable that Dak and Diop have the talent to be stars at the college level, but reaching that point takes time, especially in Boyle’s hierarchical system when it comes to age and waiting your turn.
This has led to Colorado having a deep team, with 11 players that can be worked into the rotation and give the team solid minutes, but there’s no clear best player or leader on the floor. As a testament to that, Colorado had deployed eight different starting lineups in 19 games this season, despite the team staying almost completely healthy. Ten different Buffs are averaging more than 10 minutes per game and six are averaging more than 20 minutes.
Trying to identify CU’s best player is a task in and of itself. An argument could be made for Julian Hammond, Andrej Jakimoski or Elijah Malone. All have shown flashes and have taken over games at points, but none have found consistent enough success to solidify themselves as the leader of the Buffaloes.
Unfortunately, when you lack top-end talent and a clear best player, it’s hard to dig yourself out of a 15+ turnover per game hole, which is what Tad and the Buffs are dealing with now.
Rebounding and defense aren’t meeting expectations
Another thing that hasn’t helped the Buffs is that they just aren’t playing good basketball, plain and simple.
For a program that prides itself on playing hard-nosed, defense-first basketball and dominating the rebounding battle, the Buffs have been pretty pedestrian off the boards this season.
The Buffs rank 151st in DI for rebounds thus far, with a rebounding margin of only +2. While that 151 ranking seems average, it’s far below where Colorado usually sits in the rebounding leaderboards.
In the 14 full seasons of the Tad Boyle era, Colorado has averaged the rank of 74th in DI for rebounding, firmly establishing the Buffs as one of the better rebounding programs in the country. If CU’s rank of 151st doesn’t deviate far from where it is now, it would be the second-worst rebounding team of Boyle’s tenure. The honor of the worst rebounding team Boyle has coached was the 2020-21 squad, which finished the season ranked 186th in boards.
Last season, CU finished seventh in the nation in team shooting percentage with an impressive 49.5%. After losing all of their top six scorers in the offseason, Colorado has regressed to 102nd in shooting performance with rate of 45.8%.
102nd in shooting percentage isn’t bad by any means, but it’s not great either. To compensate for an average shooting percentage, you need to play above-average defense, which Colorado isn’t doing either. In fact, Colorado's defense is even worse than their offense. CU ranks 123rd in opponent shooting perchance at 43.1%.
Much like this article, there’s not one single reason why Colorado’s defense is struggling. CU’s newcomers and young players have been having issues adjusting to Boyle's defensive schemes. This is a new team that hasn’t played together for long so there are potential communication issues at play. They’re also constantly having to play catchup to combat the plethora of turnovers committed, which isn’t helping matters.
Whatever the reason, letting your opponents make on average over 2% more shots than you per game is not a recipe for success, which is why Colorado hasn’t seen any yet.
When the going gets tough, Colorado cracks
Saying that the Buffs haven’t handled adversity well this season would be the understatement of the season. When the going gets tough for Colorado, they have consistently folded under pressure.
Turnovers have come in bunches and quick succession for the Buffs. Opponents go on long, extended runs that Colorado can’t stop or slow. When the shots aren’t falling, they REALLY don’t fall. In short, this team has shown a tendency to snowball when things don’t go their way.
The perfect example of this would be CU’s game at home against BYU on January 21, when the Buffs followed up a 14-0 run to take the lead with a 39-6 run by the Cougars and an 0-16 shooting slump from the field.
Boyle has acknowledged CU’s tendency to spiral, saying that the Buffs start feeling sorry for themselves instead of banding together to stop the bleeding.
“Here’s the thing about our team; when things go bad, we feel sorry for ourselves...” said Boyle. “Our players are feeling sorry for themselves. And that’s a problem because when you internalize “woe is me,” you’re not helping your team.”
If you’re interested in reading more about Tad Boyle’s remarks about his team’s mental toughness after the BYU game, you can read a more in-depth piece from Ralphie Report HERE.
It’s time to adjust our expectations to Big 12 basketball
This ain’t the Pac-12 anymore.
The Buffaloes have jumped from the power conference that was notoriously the worst at basketball to the best hoops conference in the nation.
Big 12 basketball is brutal and unforgiving. Being in a conference with powerhouses like Kansas, Iowa State, Baylor, Houston and Arizona can be a bloodbath.
At the time of writing this article, CU has already played eight conference games. Four of those games fell into the first quadrant, while another four fell into the second quadrant. The Buffs are slated to play six more Q1 games, five more Q2 games and one sole Q3 game in Fort Worth against TCU.
For comparison, Colorado played only six Q1 conference games in 2023-24. This season, they’re slated to play a minimum of 10 Q1 conference games. When the Buffs rejoined the Big 12, they sacrificed an easier schedule in the Pac-12 with a cutthroat schedule where they play the nation’s best teams twice a week.
Playing a Big 12 schedule is a double-edged sword for the Buffaloes. The tough schedule and constant Q1 games allow CU more leeway to snag at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament, but it can also lead to disaster like we are seeing now.
Gone are the days of feasting on the Wazzus, Oregons and Stanfords of the world. With the funding that CU currently gives to basketball, they’ll never be able to fully compete with the likes of Kansas, Iowa State, Baylor and Houston in the Big 12.
It’s time to adjust to life in the Big 12. Colorado is no longer in the upper echelon of their conference. CU is now a middle-of-the-pack program, perhaps even in the basement of the conference when it comes to funding.
Big mediocrity might be the new normal. That is until the Buffs can develop a new “guy”, increase their basketball funding to get more talent in the door, or else punch above their weight through defense and rebounding.
by RylandScholes
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