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Bzdelik's CU Legacy

CVilleBuff

Well-Known Member
Not related to our season, but just when it looked like Bzdelik had Wake improving as they only lost to #23 UConn by 5 yesterday.....they go out today against Iona, and Iona goes up 40-5 on the Deacs.
 
Not related to our season, but just when it looked like Bzdelik had Wake improving as they only lost to #23 UConn by 5 yesterday.....they go out today against Iona, and Iona goes up 40-5 on the Deacs.

Jon Embree says good game, good effort.
 
iona has been a pretty good team and made the NCAA. whatever. i never and still don't understand the love affair with Jeff Bzdelik at allbuffs. sure, he got alec burks on campus and we were dry humping each other for an NIT run. Ricardo had at least NIT teams some of the time, not every time. we are spanking each other on the internet man butt to make the NIT in Tad year one. Colorado finished last in the conference with BZ. more than once.

we are winning 3 conference games a year with BZ?

we beat team yesterday that has a bench of top 150 recruits...with some younguns of our own.......scott drew is a moron....and probably a cheater.....Jeff Bzdelik's imprint is not on that win.

Tad. recruiting. Colorado Basketball.
 
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iona has been a pretty good team and made the NCAA. whatever. i never and still don't understand the love affair with Jeff Bzdelik at allbuffs. sure, he got alec burks on campus and we were dry humping each other for an NIT run. Ricardo had at least NIT teams some of the time, not every time. we are spanking each other on the internet man butt to make the NIT in Tad year one. Colorado finished last in the conference with BZ. more than once.

we are winning 3 conference games a year with BZ?

He clearly had the Buffs headed in the right direction. In '09/'10 we were clearly improved, especially late in the season, and were a close loss with Texas Tech in the Big XII tourney away from making the NIT. He definitely laid the foundation for the turnaround. Would we be at the level we're currently at with Bzdelik? Absolutely not. He does, however, deserve credit for starting the recovery.
 
He clearly had the Buffs headed in the right direction. In '09/'10 we were clearly improved, especially late in the season, and were a close loss with Texas Tech in the Big XII tourney away from making the NIT. He definitely laid the foundation for the turnaround. Would we be at the level we're currently at with Bzdelik? Absolutely not. He does, however, deserve credit for starting the recovery.

Bzdelik was the first step in CU starting to take its basketball seriously enough. Not a great coach, but his era was an important step in the process.
 
Could the same be said about embree? Not winning games but bringing in enough "Talent" with solid recruiting for a better coach later on?
 
i respect both ya as posters CV and Nik, but my point is the "recovery" itself was BZ created. we were never as bad as we were with BZ. he made himself the solution to the crises he himself created.

imo.
 
Colorado RPI Watch

Could the same be said about embree? Not winning games but bringing in enough "Talent" with solid recruiting for a better coach later on?

No. Two of the three classes will have been at the bottom of the conference.
 
Bz' claim to fame is the practice facility.

Yes, he recruited Burks, but he didn't do much with him.

he woulda been like Rich Roby, go from scoring 20 per game to taking 14 shots a game in a team concept.

but you remember when we beat Baylor and almost OU with Blake Griffin in the Big XII, BZ let Roby and Marcus Hall play like guards and take people off the dribble. that BU team had good guards with Curtis Jerrells and Spanky SSomething. we OWNED those guys.

we were dangerous playing like that. we sucked playing Princeton nonsense.
 
i respect both ya as posters CV and Nik, but my point is the "recovery" itself was BZ created. we were never as bad as we were with BZ. he made himself the solution to the crises he himself created.

imo.

Patton left an absurdly bare cupboard for Bzdelik, Mick. I know Roby was around, but I think "absurdly bare" is still an accurate description of the situation. The success from '02/'03 was long gone. He went 7-20 (3-13 last in Big XII) his final season. You could have had Coach K in charge and those first 2-3 years would have been extremely rough. That wasn't Bzdelik's fault. He did what he could finding gems that he could get to CU, this was a time when no heavily recruited player would give us the time of day. It was a monster rebuilding job. It's a lot different than walking in and taking over a roster with a Sophomore Alec Burks, a Senior Cory Higgins, and upperclassmen like Dufault.
 
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Re: Colorado RPI Watch

Patton left an absurdly bare cupboard for Bzdelik, Mick. I know Roby was around, but I think "absurdly bare" is still an accurate description of the situation. The success from '02/'03 was long gone. He went 7-20 (3-13 last in Big XII) his final season. You could have had Coach K in charge and those first 2-3 years would have been extremely rough. That wasn't Bzdelik's fault. He did what he could finding gems that he could get to CU, this was a time when no heavily recruited player would give us the time of day. It was a monster rebuilding job. It's a lot different than walking in and taking over a roster with a Sophomore Alec Burks, a Senior Cory Higgins, and upperclassmen like Dufault.

I thought Bz chased away some decent talent. Not world beaters by any means but good enough to not be the worst team in the big 12.
 
I thought Bz chased away some decent talent. Not world beaters by any means but good enough to not be the worst team in the big 12.

Good point. Though in fairness, Bzdelik got us 5 more wins in his first season than we had the year before, even with Xavier Silas following Patton (not sure how much Bzdelik can be to blame for his dedication to following Patton) Can't really recall the Jeremy Williams situation. Yeah, we were last in the Big XII, but we had some extremely close losses to good teams, like Texas on the road and Mizzou. We also beat Baylor in the Big XII tournament, and played Oklahoma extremely tough in the next round. Things really hit rock bottom in 08/09 with the 1-15 Big XII record, although even then, we had many heartbreaking losses.
 
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Bzdelik actually needed to chase away a lot of guys. Our hoops program was an APR nightmare.

That's something that we tend to gloss over when looking at the end of the Patton and Barnett eras. APR was just coming into existence, scholarship penalties and bad university image were on the horizon for poor performance here, and both programs were in the APR toilet at the end. Basketball was much worse than football, actually. Bzdelik got this fixed.
 
Maybe Bohn meant he was hiring Troy Calhoun and building a practice facility when he said he would use the basketball model for football.

at this point that would be a monumental leap forward.
 
Boyle already has 11 neutral court wins at CU. Ricardo Patton had 18 neutral court wins from 1995-2006

From the camera.
 
Other than a potential vendetta against a man who moved to be closer to his sick daughter, any other reason why we're raking over these coals again?

Apologies, but I hate re-fighting old wars.
 
I respect what Bz did for our program. He did a lot of the dirty work to pave the way for Tad.

I also don't have any issues with him leaving us for an ACC job. I hope he gets things back on track for Wake.
 
I think that he did a good job considering where we were as a program. Getting a practice facility and attempting to reconnect the fan base and alumni were probably all good moves. But the idea of running a Princeton offense, seemingly ignoring the altitude advantage that we had was very stupid. I see him being a very successful coach with a mid-major program. Don't think he would have taken CU to where they are now under Boyle, nor was he the right hire for a fairly high profile program in Wake Forest. Had some success at Air Force, and probably could have similar success elsewhere.

Considering Bzdelik is going after some of the same recruits that we're after in 2014 (Collier and Perkins I believe), them sucking is probably a good thing.

Bzeldik's greatest achievement might end up being leaving for Wake, which inevitably led to Tad Boyle's hiring.
 
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).
 
Bz engineered a remarkable turnaround with the nuggets. Best in nba history I believe. He MAY have had long term success at CU simply because he had the program in general pointed in the right direction. I hated his offense. A buddy of mine is a WF grad - he feels similar to Bz that we feel with JE right now. I thank my buddy and WF every chance I get for helping us to build the practice facility!!
 
ricardo was a lame duck coach his last year which was a massive administrative failure. thanks Dick Tharp. he should have not been retained the final year and Roby should have turned pro. instead, Rico slydogged Roby into staying under the idea that they were making a commitment to each other and then Rico lame ducked it.

Rico also did a lousy job managing his depth chart towards the end. the year of the 9 seniors that might have been an NCAA team but faded a bit down the stretch and lost what was essentially a play-in game to ATM (that CU beat in the reg season) in the Big XII tournament. that ATM team made the Sweet 16 IIRC.

signing about 14 7 footers was a weird trait of Rico's last seasons as well. only Van Burck wasn't a total stiff/waste of scholly. the small town OK kid that OU, OSU, ORU, or Tulsa didn't offer case in point. the one kid was on Cornell's Sweet 16 team, though i think. Van Burck avg'd like 10 a game at UNI. Silas scored hell out of the ball at UNI, too.

all that said, the Patton era was much more successful than Embree's football team and CU was a middle of a VERY strong Big 8 and Big XII era pack team. KU, OU, OSU, UT all Final Four teams...Elite 8's from MU....ATM, Tech had Sweet 16 teams.

i was not a fan of BZ or that particular Bohn "search" process....but i get the good he did for the program in a sense...and EVEN if his teams were well-coached....we were terrible. doormat. lost a close games for the simple reason they had no fouls to give in the paint...other teams spent the last 7 minutes of games in the double-bonus. other team needs a hoop late....they pass it into the post and either we put them on the stripe or score an easy hoop. not to mention we can't keep them off the offensive glass. rinse repeat, every time. BZ's answer to that.....Shane Harris-Tunks.

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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i used to love/loathe RP's postgame on KOA.....we lose...every time his "analysis"...?...

"we didn't knock down shots".
 
ricardo was a lame duck coach his last year which was a massive administrative failure. thanks Dick Tharp. he should have not been retained the final year and Roby should have turned pro. instead, Rico slydogged Roby into staying under the idea that they were making a commitment to each other and then Rico lame ducked it.

Rico also did a lousy job managing his depth chart towards the end. the year of the 9 seniors that might have been an NCAA team but faded a bit down the stretch and lost what was essentially a play-in game to ATM (that CU beat in the reg season) in the Big XII tournament. that ATM team made the Sweet 16 IIRC.

signing about 14 7 footers was a weird trait of Rico's last seasons as well. only Van Burck wasn't a total stiff/waste of scholly. the small town OK kid that OU, OSU, ORU, or Tulsa didn't offer case in point. the one kid was on Cornell's Sweet 16 team, though i think. Van Burck avg'd like 10 a game at UNI. Silas scored hell out of the ball at UNI, too.

all that said, the Patton era was much more successful than Embree's football team and CU was a middle of a VERY strong Big 8 and Big XII era pack team. KU, OU, OSU, UT all Final Four teams...Elite 8's from MU....ATM, Tech had Sweet 16 teams.

i was not a fan of BZ or that particular Bohn "search" process....but i get the good he did for the program in a sense...and EVEN if his teams were well-coached....we were terrible. doormat. lost a close games for the simple reason they had no fouls to give in the paint...other teams spent the last 7 minutes of games in the double-bonus. other team needs a hoop late....they pass it into the post and either we put them on the stripe or score an easy hoop. not to mention we can't keep them off the offensive glass. rinse repeat, every time. BZ's answer to that.....Shane Harris-Tunks.

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?

ISU made a final four or at least an elite 8 too with Fizer and Tinsley.
 
Bzdelik actually needed to chase away a lot of guys. Our hoops program was an APR nightmare.

That's something that we tend to gloss over when looking at the end of the Patton and Barnett eras. APR was just coming into existence, scholarship penalties and bad university image were on the horizon for poor performance here, and both programs were in the APR toilet at the end. Basketball was much worse than football, actually. Bzdelik got this fixed.

APR was horrendous under Patton. Didn't the men lose a scholarship for that reason? Bzdelik did fix the APR issue. Definitely needed some of those players gone. The ones that followed Patton did not find success.
 
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