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Bzdelik's CU Legacy

His positive legacy in my eyes is that he had enough pull to demand a practice facility and found Burks.

He also ran players that actually fit his system quite well (big men who could shoot) to bring in his own players. Kowal, Silas (who stayed with Bz a while),Jeremy Williams, and Caleb Patterson would all go on to play pretty well in other places. Bz went .263 in Big 12 play and .383 overall at Colorado and seemed unwilling to change the offense to conform to the weapons he had.
 
jgisland said:
Bz made bball relevent at CU, Patton could have landed a top 5 class and nobody would have cared. But Bz was a hire with NBA experience and a name people knew in Colorado, hiring him showed they at least somewhat cared about hoops at CU. As mentioned the concept of running the Princeton offense in Boulder with Burks and Higgins gets you fired in the NBA (see Mike Brown).
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Well said. I think BZ had his fill of faults and stupid calls here, (and I was certainly critical) but he left the program better than when he started (and left for reasons that were admirable). Tough to fault the guy for that. I'd love to see it all end as as win for both.
 
jgisland said:
Bz made bball relevent at CU, Patton could have landed a top 5 class and nobody would have cared. But Bz was a hire with NBA experience and a name people knew in Colorado, hiring him showed they at least somewhat cared about hoops at CU. As mentioned the concept of running the Princeton offense in Boulder with Burks and Higgins gets you fired in the NBA (see Mike Brown).
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Yep, in fairness to all the dead crowds of 4,000 people we saw in the early years, it was that relatively strong finish in early 2010 where the Keg started showing some life and becoming a tough place to play. KSU around January 14th, 2010 was one of those first games where we saw the Keg show serious signs of life.

And as a followup to Wake being down 40-5 to Iona: The Deacs had an epic battle with Mercer today, coming out in the final seconds with a 74-71 win over the doormats from the Atlantic-Sun who have a 30 point loss to UIC. Wake may not win more than 1 or 2 ACC games.
 
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FLounder said:
Could the same be said about embree? Not winning games but bringing in enough "Talent" with solid recruiting for a better coach later on?
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No. B brought in better talent than Embree. There is no AB on the football team.


Coach B did a good job getting the foundation set along with the facility improvements that we needed to get to the 21st century. I look at his tenure as a positive for the program and Tad is building on that with even better recruiting and great coaching.
 
Bz biggest push to the program was for the practice facility, and providing a culture of excellance (APR, being overall good people)

Boyle took that practice facility and culture and ran with it, kinda like a vollyball player setting the spike, no one cares about the setter.

But with that said, I think the way Bz left was pretty unclassy. I understand him leaving, but Bohn finding out he was leaving through Billups, that whole deal left a bad taste in my mouth.
 
His legacy is that he, first, gave Bohn an ultimatum for a practice facility then, second, left just as Tad Boyle was beginning to make a name for himself. Another year and Tad would have been down the road with Colorado in the rear view mirror.
 
Faulting Bzdelik for running the Princeton offense shows how little some people know about basketball. The Princeton is meant to take possessions out of a game. It was actually tactically brilliant. Its why he had success at Air Force. When you're players are worse then the teams you are playing you want to have as few possessions decide the game as you can. Think of it in terms of playoffs. If you are an underdog would you rather have to win 1 game rather than 4 out of 7. Bzdelik was not perfect by any means, but when it came to X & Os the guy knew his stuff is critically acclaimed in the NBA for it. Bzdelik was not "married" to the Princeton as many think, and was evolving away from it as more athletes like Burks came in, however he had to run it to compete, and that he did. Most games he lost were close games, and his strategy kept him close against likes of Kansas, Texas, and Kansas St, games that player wise he had no business competing in.
 
Jimmy_Wood said:
Faulting Bzdelik for running the Princeton offense shows how little some people know about basketball. The Princeton is meant to take possessions out of a game. It was actually tactically brilliant. Its why he had success at Air Force. When you're players are worse then the teams you are playing you want to have as few possessions decide the game as you can. Think of it in terms of playoffs. If you are an underdog would you rather have to win 1 game rather than 4 out of 7. Bzdelik was not perfect by any means, but when it came to X & Os the guy knew his stuff is critically acclaimed in the NBA for it. Bzdelik was not "married" to the Princeton as many think, and was evolving away from it as more athletes like Burks came in, however he had to run it to compete, and that he did. Most games he lost were close games, and his strategy kept him close against likes of Kansas, Texas, and Kansas St, games that player wise he had no business competing in.
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He had 2 NBA players on that team and Tad won 24 games with essentially the same team. His players weren't worse than the opponents. It made sense at Air Force, not with the players he had at CU.
 
Buzz was not a guy who was ever going to succeed at CU but he did make a solid contribution to what we have now.

As others have mentioned Patton left a disaster of a roster with Roby as the only thing resembling a major conference talent.

Worse that that Patton had completely lost the team. I heard reports that his practices where a joke, poorly run with even poorer efforts from the players. They didn't take him seriously.

Buzz, in addition to Burks, started bringing in some guys who may not have been great players but who where at least willing to work. When Tad got here the team knew what a practice attitude was Tad didn't have to instill a complete culture change just to get things started.

I don't have a problem with Buzz, I don't wish him badly or well, I'm neutral about him. I do appreciate that he did make a contribution to the building of the program we have now but he wouldn't have come close to what we have with Tad in charge.
 
MtnBuff said:
Buzz was not a guy who was ever going to succeed at CU but he did make a solid contribution to what we have now.

As others have mentioned Patton left a disaster of a roster with Roby as the only thing resembling a major conference talent.

Worse that that Patton had completely lost the team. I heard reports that his practices where a joke, poorly run with even poorer efforts from the players. They didn't take him seriously.

Buzz, in addition to Burks, started bringing in some guys who may not have been great players but who where at least willing to work. When Tad got here the team knew what a practice attitude was Tad didn't have to instill a complete culture change just to get things started.

I don't have a problem with Buzz, I don't wish him badly or well, I'm neutral about him. I do appreciate that he did make a contribution to the building of the program we have now but he wouldn't have come close to what we have with Tad in charge.
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Depends what your definition of success is. I certainly think he'd still be here today had he not decided to leave (he'd be in his 6th season). NCAA Tournament bids would have been mostly elusive, but I think he could have got us to having a lot of 17-18 regular season win teams that were in the CBI and NIT more often than not. In my opinion, given that our admin doesn't give a **** about excellence, that would have been more than enough to keep him safe in Boulder for a long time.
 
I don't think we are in the position we're in today without having hired Bzdelik first.
 
Wake won a nailbiter against William & Mary, 63-57 today, in a game that went back and forth with many lead changes. They're looking at a 10-20 (3-15) season, and that was WITH me giving them a couple break wins that tend to happen over the course of a basketball season. May very well end up worse than that.
 
The folks at Wake are probably kind of pissed off by now. I can't say I would blame them. They're used to better.
 
sackman said:
The folks at Wake are probably kind of pissed off by now. I can't say I would blame them. They're used to better.
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They've been pissed off about Bzdelik since before he even coached his first game. It's a minor miracle he's made it this long, even with him being buddy-buddy with the AD.

Keep in mind, his predecessor Dino Gaudio was fired in 2010 for winning 20 games, finishing 5th in the ACC, and making the Round of 32 in the Big Dance
 
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Tad did walk into a pretty good team his first year. Burks and Higgins were both solid big 12 talent. Plus in his first year he had Knutson and Relphorde who were good. And Tomlinson and Dufault were both instrumental getting CU into the tournament last year. They might not have been as stacked as Kansas but they were good enough to get the job done.
 
The Bzdelik misery continues: lost 62-60 at Richmond today. Actually progress to come to close on the road against a halfway decent team, but when you're 3-4 at this point in the season, you know it's going to be a long season. They've got a chance to get a few wins with 4 "winnables" coming up, but then the ACC slaughter sets in
 
The whole Bzdelik/Boyle episode just goes to show you how much happenstance and luck play into the future course of any program. Bz left to coach for a friend who is AD at Wake and obviously for more money. He inherited great talent and a Top 20 recruitng class at Wake and promptly sucked for two years.
But he left the door open for Boyle, even contributing $500K of buyout to the practice facility.

Boyle was only a semi-known quatity at UNC, while McClain and Dunlap were much better known, yet Bohn went with his gut and now look how things have shaken out for all concerned. If you wrote a fiction story like that, no one would believe it!
 
Buffenuf said:
The whole Bzdelik/Boyle episode just goes to show you how much happenstance and luck play into the future course of any program. Bz left to coach for a friend who is AD at Wake and obviously for more money. He inherited great talent and a Top 20 recruitng class at Wake and promptly sucked for two years.
But he left the door open for Boyle, even contributing $500K of buyout to the practice facility.

Boyle was only a semi-known quatity at UNC, while McClain and Dunlap were much better known, yet Bohn went with his gut and now look how things have shaken out for all concerned. If you wrote a fiction story like that, no one would believe it!
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ESPN did a closeup on McClain on the Indiana bench the other night, and I thought "Oh yeah, what could have been..."
 
Big victory for Bzdelik and Wake Forest tonight as they beat an 11-3 UVA team -- that was coming off a dominating win over North Carolina -- in Winston-Salem. If there's one program in basketball (and football) that is as mystifyingly bad on the road as CU, it's UVA. Big home win followed by inexcusable road loss? That's exactly the same thing CU does. It's become so common with both schools that it's actually easy to predict and see coming.

Wake is 8-6 (1-1) now with Boston College, @ Clemson and @ VT their next three games (those are the 3 other worst teams in the ACC). If Bzdelik is going to make a stand to keep his job, it started here tonight and will have to carry over. They have one of the more favorable ACC schedules -- but even still, they'll likely end up completely buried.
 
Mick Ronson said:
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ricardo was never a great x and o guy and his early teams were pretty tough on D....which he did seem to coach pretty well. then he seemed to get away from that. RP's offense was essentially let Morandais or Jaquay go 1 on 5. so, hey?
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Ricardo was never a great coach or recruiter. He recruited two players of note: Chauncey and Robey. Everyone else with BB talent was some mercenary assistant coach's "get", as I recall. And he let a number of in-state recruits get away, claiming Colo kids could not play D-1 ball; e.g. he didn't bother recruiting them.

Chauncey left early before RP's mental beatdowns could ruin his talent and self-confidence; but unfortunately for him, Robey did not. Many CU recruits were not only "not coached up", but actually regressed under RP, which was the frustrating thing about his tenure. That and the fact that he was a PR nightmare for attracting fan support.

Well, okay, it was also frustrating that he was so poor a coach that his teams could barely run an "in-bounds" play, let alone an offense. When he hired Mike Frink to install a real offense(which ran up a 10-1 record in pre-Big 12) RP ran Frink off, because Frink was getting too much credit! As for "D"? Any credit for that also goes to assistants, but nobody overshadowed RP as a result of good "D".
 
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WizzersGhost said:
Ricardo was never a great coach or recruiter. He recruited two players of note: Chauncey and Robey. Everyone else with BB talent was some mercenary assistant coach's "get", as I recall. And he let a number of in-state recruits get away, claiming Colo kids could not play D-1 ball; e.g. he didn't bother recruiting them.

Chauncey left early before RP's mental beatdowns could ruin his talent and self-confidence; but unfortunately for him, Robey did not. Many CU recruits were not only "not coached up", but actually regressed under RP, which was the frustrating thing about his tenure. That and the fact that he was a PR nightmare for attracting fan support.

Well, okay, it was also frustrating that he was so poor a coach that his teams could barely run an "in-bounds" play, let alone an offense. When he hired Mike Frink to install a real offense(which ran up a 10-1 record in pre-Big 12) RP ran Frink off, because Frink was getting too much credit! As for "D"? Any credit for that also goes to assistants, but nobody overshadowed RP as a result of good "D".
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RP was a PR nightmare
 
Who recruited Pele, Renfroe, Moriandas, Walls, that white kid that could shoot lights out, etc.? They all had some real talent. The problem was that they never got any better under under Patton's coaching.
 
Daaah said:
Who recruited Pele, Renfroe, Moriandas, Walls, that white kid that could shoot lights out, etc.? They all had some real talent. The problem was that they never got any better under under Patton's coaching.
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I believe you're referring to Levi Knutson.
 
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