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The Aftermath and Where We're Headed

Goose

Goose

Hoops Moderator
Club Member
Junta Member
I love this board, but holy crap is it bi-polar (and yes, I'm as guilty of it as anyone else). To everyone freaking out, I'm genuinely confused on what you thought you would see last night. There were posters that called Spencer the "heart and soul" of this team, but still thought we'd kick ass throughout and there wouldn't be much of an adjustment period. Really? If he's that important, you don't replace him in 4 days. It's just not possible. I've also seen some (a lot?) of people bitching about the rotations last night. Don't get me wrong, I was confused by some of it too, but Tad all of a sudden has 41 minutes in every game that he now has to fill (31 from Spencer and 10 from Tre). There's going to be some mixing and matching right now. There's going to be some "who has the hot hand?". It's going to be a work in progress. Did everyone forget how the first few games of the year always have odd rotations? And that's after an entire summer of practice and a few scrimmages. This **** was thrown together in FOUR DAYS. And on top of Spencer & Tre, it's now public, but XJ has tendonitis in his knees and the team wasn't 100% positive that they were going to have him last night.

I honestly just don't know what everyone expected last night. If you ask me, I was pleasantly surprised. Tad's game plan last night was perfect if you ask me. The team had phenomenal ball movement, and I thought the defensive scheme was pretty damn smart (I'm not thrilled about the Wes & DT guarding Kyle Anderson part, but he didn't burn us too badly, so obviously the risk was worth it). I thought the bench was great. Ignore the shooting numbers at the end there, and that was one of XT's best games in a long time. He looked solid on D, he looked aggressive on offense. He finished 2-of-7, but I'm willing to say that 3 of those shots came in the last 90 seconds when we were jacking things up. DT was the most aggressive I'd seen him in months. If he can keep that up, it'll help a lot. Eli even played some solid ball. He had an ugly shot at the end of the game, but I'm willing to overlook that. He looked like the player he was pre-Kansas last year, which is what we need from him.

Ski & Josh were phenomenal. Jelly did what he's done all year, only slightly better. That's what we need. He was great. As for Ski, I honestly don't know what you can say. He shot great shots, he was efficient, and he kept the team rolling. Will he shoot 70% the rest of the season? Hell no. But there's no reason to think that Ski can't help carry us in the backcourt.

XJ, JHop & Wes did not have the best games. And they know it. XJ is bothered by the knee, so I'm willing to give him a little bit of a pass, but he's the guy we need to step up. He has the talent, he's done it before, he'll do it again. Wes... was bad. He was just bad. And he knows it. JG made a great point on the drive home that his rebounding numbers were bound to suffer as he was guarding UCLA's PG, but he didn't look great on D (that was a bad matchup for him) and he struggled on O. As long as he can go back to playing great D and rebounding, I'm fine with this. As for JHop, I actually had a feeling this game may be coming. I said something pre-game to Rugged about how I could see him forcing too much to try to prove that he was ready to fill Spencer's shoes, and that's exactly what he did. He tried to do too much. And you know what, we're gonna have 3-4 games like that from him the rest of this season. But we're also going to have 3-4 games where he DOES fill Spencer's shoes and shows why Tad is convinced he's a future star.

And Tad's not wrong on this one.

I guess I'm just struggling to see why everyone is so down on this game. We had the #25 team in the nation, a team that's a matchup nightmare for the Buffs and a team that CU has NEVER BEATEN IN PAC-12 PLAY coming in to our gym 4 days after our best player and a key bench reserve went down for the season. We hung with them through ~30-35 minutes before they pulled away late. What part of this is surprising? Why is everyone so down all of a sudden on this?

The Buffs are going to win Saturday. They're going to lose next week in both Arizona and Arizona State. But they're going to come together. We're not going to know what we have on this team until Saturday, February 1st when we host Utah. By that point, things will have settled, guys will have figured things out, and the staff will have put things together. This isn't going to be the dream season we thought it was going to be. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be #TadBall. It's going to be B1G basketball. And instead of the drama of "will we be a top 4 seed?" on Selection Sunday, we're going to be nervous about even making the tournament. But this team will figure it out, and they will be dancing. And I'm really hoping that everyone just sits back and realizes that the next two weeks are a new training camp, and we need to be patient. We don't know a lot about this team right now. We will on February 2nd. Wait until then to decide what's going on.
 
Great post, very solid and accurate points.

Above all else, the crowd let the team down last night. Body language may have been an issue late in the game, but I'm not sure if anything could have gotten the first 20 rows out of their damn seats.
 
Rep.
The sky has not fallen. This was going to be a tough out with the mayor and fletch. We held a team that typically scores ~86 points to 65 or so.
 
YMSSRA

I still think we can get a top 8 seed in the tournament. We aren't even half way through conference play and people are talking like we are dead in the water. Everyone remember those ugly games against Baylor, Wyoming, and Santa Barbara? We are right back to that point in our team development. We were adjusting to life post Roberson, and we figured it out. We are now adjusting to life post Dinwiddie, and we will figure it out.
 
wyobuff said:
Rep.
The sky has not fallen. This was going to be a tough out with the mayor and fletch. We held a team that typically scores ~86 points to 65 or so.
Click to expand...

Agreed the sky has not fallen.

UCLA for what ever reason since we entered this league has had our number like no other team.
 
I'm down, but not on the team. There were signs of encouragement last night. UCLA might have beaten us w/o the injuries, they just continue to be a bad matchup for us. I just hope that the students continue to bring it.
 
Good post.
That was a very winnable game, but these young men need a chance to get their confidence and coordination in place.
I did think the refs weren't calling a lot of rebounding fouls, particularly where Scott was getting hammered.
All in all I was pleased and look forward to beating usc Saturday
 
And Goose, didn't I say before the game I expected us to win by 3? And wouldn't I have been right if WE MADE OUR ****ING LAYUPS!! Seriously though, with how well we played on defense for the first 35 minutes and all the point blank shots we missed in that same time, we should have had a 5 point lead going into the home stretch.

This is the reason I have some confidence moving forward. No way we miss 12ish 1-foot shots in a single game again, with none of them (that I recall) being blocked. That is an absurd amount of easy misses. Thirteen point loss looks ****ty, but we were right there.

And sure, on the other side of the argument you can say Ski won't shoot the way he did for every game either. True, but also their guy who went for 19 set his season high by 6 points. We can get into "what ifs" for everything, but the layup thing is the most relevant, imo, because they are usually a very high percentage shot.
 
That was a very winable game. I think that's what frustrates me the most.

There will be an adjustment period. You can't simply replace somebody who meant as much to this team as Spencer did. It would be nice if we could get a few easier games to make that adjustment with, though.

That said, I think I might have actually wanted to stab Eli Stalzer in the ear last night.
 
Goose said:
I love this board, but holy crap is it bi-polar (and yes, I'm as guilty of it as anyone else). To everyone freaking out, I'm genuinely confused on what you thought you would see last night. There were posters that called Spencer the "heart and soul" of this team, but still thought we'd kick ass throughout and there wouldn't be much of an adjustment period. Really? If he's that important, you don't replace him in 4 days. It's just not possible. I've also seen some (a lot?) of people bitching about the rotations last night. Don't get me wrong, I was confused by some of it too, but Tad all of a sudden has 41 minutes in every game that he now has to fill (31 from Spencer and 10 from Tre). There's going to be some mixing and matching right now. There's going to be some "who has the hot hand?". It's going to be a work in progress. Did everyone forget how the first few games of the year always have odd rotations? And that's after an entire summer of practice and a few scrimmages. This **** was thrown together in FOUR DAYS. And on top of Spencer & Tre, it's now public, but XJ has tendonitis in his knees and the team wasn't 100% positive that they were going to have him last night.

I honestly just don't know what everyone expected last night. If you ask me, I was pleasantly surprised. Tad's game plan last night was perfect if you ask me. The team had phenomenal ball movement, and I thought the defensive scheme was pretty damn smart (I'm not thrilled about the Wes & DT guarding Kyle Anderson part, but he didn't burn us too badly, so obviously the risk was worth it). I thought the bench was great. Ignore the shooting numbers at the end there, and that was one of XT's best games in a long time. He looked solid on D, he looked aggressive on offense. He finished 2-of-7, but I'm willing to say that 3 of those shots came in the last 90 seconds when we were jacking things up. DT was the most aggressive I'd seen him in months. If he can keep that up, it'll help a lot. Eli even played some solid ball. He had an ugly shot at the end of the game, but I'm willing to overlook that. He looked like the player he was pre-Kansas last year, which is what we need from him.

Ski & Josh were phenomenal. Jelly did what he's done all year, only slightly better. That's what we need. He was great. As for Ski, I honestly don't know what you can say. He shot great shots, he was efficient, and he kept the team rolling. Will he shoot 70% the rest of the season? Hell no. But there's no reason to think that Ski can't help carry us in the backcourt.

XJ, JHop & Wes did not have the best games. And they know it. XJ is bothered by the knee, so I'm willing to give him a little bit of a pass, but he's the guy we need to step up. He has the talent, he's done it before, he'll do it again. Wes... was bad. He was just bad. And he knows it. JG made a great point on the drive home that his rebounding numbers were bound to suffer as he was guarding UCLA's PG, but he didn't look great on D (that was a bad matchup for him) and he struggled on O. As long as he can go back to playing great D and rebounding, I'm fine with this. As for JHop, I actually had a feeling this game may be coming. I said something pre-game to Rugged about how I could see him forcing too much to try to prove that he was ready to fill Spencer's shoes, and that's exactly what he did. He tried to do too much. And you know what, we're gonna have 3-4 games like that from him the rest of this season. But we're also going to have 3-4 games where he DOES fill Spencer's shoes and shows why Tad is convinced he's a future star.

And Tad's not wrong on this one.

I guess I'm just struggling to see why everyone is so down on this game. We had the #25 team in the nation, a team that's a matchup nightmare for the Buffs and a team that CU has NEVER BEATEN IN PAC-12 PLAY coming in to our gym 4 days after our best player and a key bench reserve went down for the season. We hung with them through ~30-35 minutes before they pulled away late. What part of this is surprising? Why is everyone so down all of a sudden on this?

The Buffs are going to win Saturday. They're going to lose next week in both Arizona and Arizona State. But they're going to come together. We're not going to know what we have on this team until Saturday, February 1st when we host Utah. By that point, things will have settled, guys will have figured things out, and the staff will have put things together. This isn't going to be the dream season we thought it was going to be. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be #TadBall. It's going to be B1G basketball. And instead of the drama of "will we be a top 4 seed?" on Selection Sunday, we're going to be nervous about even making the tournament. But this team will figure it out, and they will be dancing. And I'm really hoping that everyone just sits back and realizes that the next two weeks are a new training camp, and we need to be patient. We don't know a lot about this team right now. We will on February 2nd. Wait until then to decide what's going on.
Click to expand...

Well said!
 
Goose said:
I guess I'm just struggling to see why everyone is so down on this game.
Click to expand...

It's not really about this game. It's about how you look when you lose. We played great defense, and still lost handily.

IMO, it has ZERO to do with "confidence" or the team "figuring things out" and needing more tim .... everything to do with talent and ability. Outside of Jelly and Ski, I don't see a single consistent offensive threat on this team. That's it. We shoot horribly. That has nothing to do with schemes or confidence. When we get open looks, we can't make the shot. Simple as that. I've said it many other places, look at the numbers. You take Spencer's numbers out, and we're LAST in 3FG% and next to last in FG%. And these were all problems before the fateful UW game, I was saying it well before that.
 
I was pretty down on Hopkins last night but then I looked at this:

I present Spencer's freshman year stats:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/player/gamelog/_/id/56288/year/2012/spencer-dinwiddie


last night Hopkins was 1-6 for 2 points.

Here are some bad offensive games from Spencers freshman year

@Cal 1-5 for 2 points
vs Stanford 0-4 for 1 point
@ Oregon State 0-4 for 1 point
vs Cal 1-6 for 6 points

What really separates Hopkins from Spencer is Hopkins needs to stop gambling on defense (which he was able to do in high school because he is so athletic) and shoot much better free throws. I think if Hopkins can be a little more under control when driving and really work on his free throws over the summer we won't be so upset losing Spencer. I am not saying Hopkins is the new Spencer, since they play very different, but hopefully Hopkins can grow to replace his production.
 
Pretty much went as I expected as I did not expect a W, and I expect an adjustment period. I am on record stating that .500 the rest of the way is a top end goal and 3-4 wins is worst case. Not only was Spencer our best player, but the timing of this is awful as it happens right at a time when there's little time to make adjustments.

I think we got a fantastic game out of Ski. We will continue to need that as Talton and Hopkins get more comfortable. And we are going to need XJ, Thomas and Gordon to all grow as well. It would really help if XJ and Thomas could be real threats from the 3 point line. I think both of them are shooters, but aren't right now. We need them to be.

This will take some time, but I think Tad will have us ready to surprise somebody by PAC12 tournament time.
 
I don't think it's really fair to blame the loss on Spencer and Fletcher being out. Yes, they are both key players that would have helped CU, but Colorado missed a lot of point blank layups and got abused on the glass. It was a very winnable game even with both of them out.

I do agree that there is a general overreaction that isn't really accurate or fair to the team. Let's see how they respond against USC, before burying CU's season.
 
Goose is spot on. I did not expect a win and was pretty excited with the score at half time. Rugged also said it, we should have been ahead at the half or very close. We missed so many shots under the basket, freaking layups. We also were horrible from the charity stripe. Bottom line, we were in a game and had a chance against a team that was top 25 team and it was a first game adjustment without the Mayor. Pretty good effort for the first one out.
 
Goose is out of his ****ing mind. I don't care if we only have 1 player in our rotation who is older than a sophomore or just had 2 key players go down. Next man up. CU should never lose to programs like UCLA.
 
Buffnik said:
Goose is out of his ****ing mind. I don't care if we only have 1 player in our rotation who is older than a sophomore or just had 2 key players go down. Next man up. CU should never lose to programs like UCLA.
Click to expand...

^^^^^
 
giphy.gif


for those that didn't catch it... wrong font nik.
 
tante said:
I was pretty down on Hopkins last night but then I looked at this:

I present Spencer's freshman year stats:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/player/gamelog/_/id/56288/year/2012/spencer-dinwiddie


last night Hopkins was 1-6 for 2 points.

Here are some bad offensive games from Spencers freshman year

@Cal 1-5 for 2 points
vs Stanford 0-4 for 1 point
@ Oregon State 0-4 for 1 point
vs Cal 1-6 for 6 points

What really separates Hopkins from Spencer is Hopkins needs to stop gambling on defense (which he was able to do in high school because he is so athletic) and shoot much better free throws. I think if Hopkins can be a little more under control when driving and really work on his free throws over the summer we won't be so upset losing Spencer. I am not saying Hopkins is the new Spencer, since they play very different, but hopefully Hopkins can grow to replace his production.
Click to expand...


i tried to engage JG in a Hopkins vs Spencer frosh campaign discussion - he's actively ignoring me.
 
where we are going part:

next year we have the 250 pound guy coming in and I'm hoping Scott and XJ and a few others put on another 10 - 20 each. We need muscle inside and we should have it
 
Hopkins is a better athlete but he can't shoot free throws at all. That's a huge difference. Spencer is practically automatic at the free throw line, even during his frosh year he shot 81%. They are nothing alike except body type.

I sincerely believe Hopkins has a higher ceiling than Dinwiddie, but he will never be a starting guard or get starter minutes if he shoots 50% from the free throw line every game.

I'm not going to judge the team after the first game post Dinwiddie with four days to practice. Our defense was fine against one of the best offenses in the country, but our offense needs to pick up the slack. We aren't going to win many games scoring 56 points.

We should beat USC, probably get killed in Arizona to UA and ASU, and then hopefully be ready to come out and win three games against teams we should beat at home (somebody please guard Wilcox). I expect Hopkins to settle down as he adjusts to getting more minutes, and Talton to continue to play better. We are a extrememly young team with Dinwiddie, and now, we are even younger without him. No excuses but guys will get better.

We might not get to the tourney (need to go 9-9 in conference IMO), which sucks because we have never made three tourneys in a row and we would have done it with Spencer, but this experience will help us prepare for next year if Dinwiddie doesn't come back.

NIT would still be a great eperience for this young group. That's the silver lining in this. Next year, Collier will come in and be Boyle's first true PG ever, and I think he will start right away. For how great Dinwiddie was to us, he wasn't a true pass first PG. Miller will be a big body that will punish teams down low off the bench rght away.

Lots to look forward to even if we dont' get that tourney bid this year. Boyle is building a program that sustains itself.
 
I didn't see the game but judging by the box score, the Buffs didn't let UCLA get theirs. Defensively, that was a pretty good game. When Jordan Adams goes 4-15, you've done something right.

Norman Powell last scored 19 points in November. He's a good basketball player but not the nightly reason UCLA wins games. But he is the reason they are UCLA. That their fourth scoring option can beat you. And he did. Sometimes you tip your hat.
 
jwhite17 said:
Next year, Collier will come in and be Boyle's first true PG ever, and I think he will start right away.
Click to expand...

Nate.

As for Dom starting, I thought the same thing, but after talking to JG I think it's possible that Dom comes off the bench next year. Tad LOVES JHop. Not only have I seen comments publicly about how he thinks he's a star, talking to some people last night behind the scenes and he's RAVING about him. He absolutely loves the kid. And the way Tad values loyalty and sticking with guys, I think JHop will be starting every game for the rest of his career in Boulder.
 
I was at the game and thought both teams were playing aggressive defense. I also thought that UCLA matched up very well defensively against CU especially inside. People are complaining about layups but there were not too many uncontested layups. CU just did not take advantage of the opportunities, I was disappointed in CU missing several FTs in the second half especially the front end of 1 and 1 situations - hitting those would have helped close the gap.
 
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