By Adam Butler
www.PacHoops.com
I settled in to the last 5 to 10 minutes of that spicy little number at The Keg Sunday
afternoon. I’d already received the ScoreCenter alert that the Buffs had been trailing a
dozen at the break and had made some assumptions based simply on score: Harvard had
dropped into a zone, limited the Buffs’ ability to run, and CU wasn’t hitting shots. My
hypothesis was only semi-validated as CU was 4-10 from distance. Alas, half-by-half
stats aren’t easily attainable so I’ll let my analysis of the first twenty rest there.
Because the final few minutes that I saw, from the time Colorado was trailing 52-48
off of a pair of Jelly free throws, I saw a terrific basketball team. All of the athleticism
we discuss on the wings? They were crashing the glass, cleaning up rushed and forced
Harvard shots taken from what a swarming and switching Buffalo defense would allow
them. Maybe I won’t break down the halves, but the game that I saw had a final score
of Colorado 23, Harvard 10. And those were the Buffaloes that I (if not we) have been
touting as a top-25 team, fighting for a top-3 pac-12 finish, and the collective ability to
dance on into the second weekend.
I liked it. Adam liked it a lot because I’m a process guy and I’m not soon to get hung up
on wins and losses so much as I am the execution of the game. I want to see progress
within the process and that’s what I gathered from the close of that game. Because
basketball is a 40 minute contest and basketball seasons are 30 games long. This isn’t
college football where Oregon is now seemingly playing for nothing (Hey! Claw ‘em
Cats, eh?). Because college hoops affords teams the time learn about themselves. Have
you felt Tad’s substitutions have been a bit cavalier? He’s worked his way perhaps deep
into an inexperienced bench even at the expense of fluid if not effective basketball? You
think that experience is going to help during a nine-minute scoring drought in March?
I sure do. Because inexeperience is the name of the game in Boulder and the beauty of
having Spencer Dinwiddie, Askia Booker, and Josh Scott is that learning curve is so
much more forgiving. It’s like an open note test. Those three “veterans” accounted for 41
of the 70 Buffalo points and I’m not even including Xavier Johnson in the mathematics.
He still strikes me as raw though maybe the most important player on the team. Ah hell,
let’s just note that he indeed had 11/6 and the two biggest threes of the game. You see,
open note test.
And I can tell you right now, the test is going to have some tough questions on it that
these Buffs might not have accounted for on that cheat sheet. (See: Smart, Marcus;
Wiggins, Andrew). But with each time that ball is tipped, more notes are taken and the
cheat sheet accumulates more and more notes. The test gets easier and easier and before
you know it, we’re in the third month of the season when we tear up all the sheets and
everything we thought we knew about everything and we fight to get to Dallas.
As Always find Adam on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/pachoopsab
https://twitter.com/PacHoops_Feeder
www.PacHoops.com
I settled in to the last 5 to 10 minutes of that spicy little number at The Keg Sunday
afternoon. I’d already received the ScoreCenter alert that the Buffs had been trailing a
dozen at the break and had made some assumptions based simply on score: Harvard had
dropped into a zone, limited the Buffs’ ability to run, and CU wasn’t hitting shots. My
hypothesis was only semi-validated as CU was 4-10 from distance. Alas, half-by-half
stats aren’t easily attainable so I’ll let my analysis of the first twenty rest there.
Because the final few minutes that I saw, from the time Colorado was trailing 52-48
off of a pair of Jelly free throws, I saw a terrific basketball team. All of the athleticism
we discuss on the wings? They were crashing the glass, cleaning up rushed and forced
Harvard shots taken from what a swarming and switching Buffalo defense would allow
them. Maybe I won’t break down the halves, but the game that I saw had a final score
of Colorado 23, Harvard 10. And those were the Buffaloes that I (if not we) have been
touting as a top-25 team, fighting for a top-3 pac-12 finish, and the collective ability to
dance on into the second weekend.
I liked it. Adam liked it a lot because I’m a process guy and I’m not soon to get hung up
on wins and losses so much as I am the execution of the game. I want to see progress
within the process and that’s what I gathered from the close of that game. Because
basketball is a 40 minute contest and basketball seasons are 30 games long. This isn’t
college football where Oregon is now seemingly playing for nothing (Hey! Claw ‘em
Cats, eh?). Because college hoops affords teams the time learn about themselves. Have
you felt Tad’s substitutions have been a bit cavalier? He’s worked his way perhaps deep
into an inexperienced bench even at the expense of fluid if not effective basketball? You
think that experience is going to help during a nine-minute scoring drought in March?
I sure do. Because inexeperience is the name of the game in Boulder and the beauty of
having Spencer Dinwiddie, Askia Booker, and Josh Scott is that learning curve is so
much more forgiving. It’s like an open note test. Those three “veterans” accounted for 41
of the 70 Buffalo points and I’m not even including Xavier Johnson in the mathematics.
He still strikes me as raw though maybe the most important player on the team. Ah hell,
let’s just note that he indeed had 11/6 and the two biggest threes of the game. You see,
open note test.
And I can tell you right now, the test is going to have some tough questions on it that
these Buffs might not have accounted for on that cheat sheet. (See: Smart, Marcus;
Wiggins, Andrew). But with each time that ball is tipped, more notes are taken and the
cheat sheet accumulates more and more notes. The test gets easier and easier and before
you know it, we’re in the third month of the season when we tear up all the sheets and
everything we thought we knew about everything and we fight to get to Dallas.
As Always find Adam on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/pachoopsab
https://twitter.com/PacHoops_Feeder
