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Let’s get nostalgic over here.
In case you haven’t heard, the Buffs are back in the Big 12 and taking their lumps just like they did for more than 40 years of Colorado men’s basketball. And that’s right, that means the Kansas Jayhawks are coming to town to lay a beat down on the Buffs.
The Buffs have never fared well in this matchup. It’s the original blue blood against the basement dweller of the Big 8/12. Since 1987-88 — the year Danny Manning led Kansas to a title — the Buffs have won just three (3) games and lost fifty-four (54). But we don’t care about the losses, just those wins.
Each of those happened in a special season for Colorado. Led by Shaun Vandiver, the 1990-91 Buffs knocked off an 8th ranked KU, one of the Buffs’ 19 wins that season, their most successful campaign since 1968-69. Colorado wouldn’t win again until 2002-03, when David Harrison and Stephane Pelle overwhelmed #6 Kansas in a 60-59 win. The Buffs would reach the NCAA Tournament that year, one of two tournament berths in the 42 years between Sox Walseth’s last and Tad Boyle’s first appearance.
And then there’s 2013-14.
The Buffs had always been in the Big 8/12 basement, but no longer. Tad Boyle, a once proud Kansas Jayhawk, broke us out. His first year was a massive success — 24 wins, an NIT Final Four appearance, our best season since Chauncey Billups wore the uniform. Colorado lost Cory Higgins and Alec Burks and was picked to finish 11th in the brand-new Pac-12, but the resilient Buffs defied all odds and won the damn conference. They even won an NCAA Tournament game, then came a Brady Heslip short of the Sweet Sixteen.
That was 2011-12. Most of the conference champs were seniors, but a couple of them would stick around. Spencer Dinwiddie, the crafty, 6’5 point guard who would go on to play 11 years (and counting) in the NBA. Askia Booker, the mercurial combo guard who would carry the Buffs to the Charleston Classic, hang 27 on Oregon in a 100-91 win, and, uh, some other stuff that would figure into his complicated legacy at Colorado.
Not to be outdone, Tad Boyle landed a few prized recruits in the last two years. The best was a top-50 recruit from nearby Palmer Ridge, an ambidextrous, 6’10 center who could’ve started anywhere in the country by the name of Josh Scott. There was also Xavier Johnson, an inconsistent but extremely talented wing who could get hot at any moment. And finally, Wesley Gordon, a dominant rim protector and rebounder ... when motivated.
The bench was not very good — George King, a future pro, wasn’t ready, while future MAC Player of the Year Tre’Shaun Fletcher was never utilized — but there was a 7’1 Ben Mills waiting for his moment to shine.
Everything came together in 2013-14. The Buffs had built their brand of TadBall, playing positional defense, crashing the boards and pushing the pace in transition. They had the dynamic guards to keep up with high-scoring opponents, Dinwiddie with the court vision and Booker with the hot hand. All of that revolved around Scott, the teen big who played like a 10-year pro.
This team was built to do great things and that they did. Colorado hosted Kansas having won their last 8 games. Only Colorado State put up a fight, and they were undone by Dinwiddie’s 28-point masterclass. The Jayhawks were still the heavy favorites, as they had Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid, the first and third pick in the upcoming 2014 NBA Draft, as well as future Big 12 icons Perry Ellis III, Wayne Selden and “BIFM” Frank Mason.
We all know how that game went. Dinwiddie got to the free throw line at will, dished a few assists and controlled the game like always. Seldom-used reserve Ben Mills outplayed Embiid, as he made a turnaround fadeaway and then a lefty hook over for the future MVP. Scott, Johnson and Fletcher all had their moments as Colorado went hit for hit and took a 9-point lead with about 10 minutes left.
Kansas refused to go quietly. Wiggins was a handful. Naadir Thorpe and Mason hit clutch shots to inch the Jayhawks closer. And then Ellis, a soon-to-be enemy of every college fan from Albuquerque to College Park, tied the game at 72 with just four seconds left.
Now, I’ll leave it to Mark Johnson in the final seconds:
“XJ plays the ball into Booker, down to two, down to one, fires on the buzzer ... and it’s in! And It’s in! Askia Booker with the runner as time expires!”
CU fans rushed the court and mobbed the hero. It was not a celebration of just the shot, or the win over Kansas, but the arrival of Colorado basketball. We had already won the Pac-12 title, beat UNLV in the NCAA Tournament, and then reached the tournament the following year too. But it felt more like a magical run than an established program.
The Kansas win gave us that staying power, that we could not only upset top teams at home — as we had knocked off #5 Texas in 2011 — but that we could beat anyone in the country with this team and in this era of Colorado basketball.
Sadly, the 2013-14 Buffs never got a fair chance. They continued their stellar play for the next month, losing only to Marcus Smart’s Oklahoma State in an empty Las Vegas arena. The Buffs climbed into the Top 25 and reached #15 after a thrilling win over #10 Oregon. It looked like a team capable of a Pac-12 title and a Sweet Sixteen run, only for the slippery floors of Washington’s Alaska Airlines Center that claimed the ACL of Dinwiddie.
Dinwiddie never played again for CU and the offense fell apart without its floor general. They were a .500 team the rest of the season, bogged down by an inefficient offense that fell into 10-minute-long cold stretches. CU still made the tournament as an 8-seed, but rather than a Sweet Sixteen run, they suffered a humiliating 77-48 first-round loss to the Pitt Panthers.
The Buffs fell apart for a few years after that. Due to some recruiting misses and locker room drama, Boyle reached just one NCAA Tournament in the next six years. Only when the Buffs overhauled their coaching staff and recruiting strategy did they bounce back, and it was thanks to players like McKinley Wright, Evan Battey, KJ Simpson and Tristan da Silva that the program reached and even surpassed those same heights.
It might be a while before the Buffs are that good again. Boyle might retire sooner rather than later and the next coach might not find that same success on such a small budget, especially in this NIL environment. We should be careful not to fall back on nostalgia and mark these as the glory days, but they were in a way, and we should continue to celebrate the Ben Mills and Ski Bookers of that era of Colorado basketball.
by Sam Metivier
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