BOULDER, Colo. – It wasn’t long ago that I proclaimed here on AllBuffs, “I’m just confused.” In fact, just about a week ago I was pretty darn clueless as to who exactly this Colorado team is and just what exactly happened up in Laramie.
I mean, 33 points…really?
A week later, and things have slowly come into a bit more focus. Sure, we’re still a ways off from getting a truly accurate read on the team as a whole, which is to be expected as we’ve seen just five games thus far. But we’re getting closer, slowly.
Before I get into my eventual diatribe and inevitable diagnosis as to what it is that we’ve all watched this past week, it’s important to provide some context that is necessary to temper concerns stemming from two uninspiring wins over Air Force and Lipscomb. Every year since Tad Boyle has been in Boulder and leading the Buffaloes, his teams have put up a stinker or two in nonconference play. Remember the 83-81 overtime loss to San Francisco, a game where Cory Higgins and Alex Burks combined to score 57 points, or the eight point opening night win over Idaho State? If not, then you must remember the 85-80 double overtime win over Texas Southern where Omar Strong scored 39 points, including nine trey balls. No? What about the six-point victory over CSU-Bakersfield just a few weeks later? Surely, last year’s eight-point win over an Alan Williams-less UCSB squad, one where Taran Brown dropped eight threes, rings a bell.
The reality of college basketball is that there are few elite teams every year, teams that can go on the road and dominate the way most others do at home. There are few teams in the country who aren’t handicapped offensively once the pace slows down and they’re forced to execute in the half court. Few coaches have the strategic chops to diagram flawless offensive execution and the recruiting ability to enroll the talent to make it all come together.
Colorado would be averaging 76.8 points per game if we wiped the slate clean of their stinker against Wyoming, which of course is an asinine thing to do because it happened and it sucked and there’s not a lot to really be done about it. But this is my article, so I’ll do what I please. Outside of that day North of the Wall, the Buffs would be among the nation’s top 56 teams in scoring offense. By that same token, if we were to remove the outlier from their current stance of 58.2 points surrendered per game, the Buffs would be sitting at a cool 54 points allowed per game, which entering Sunday, was good for No. 12 in the country. Of the top 10 defenses in the country, only Kentucky, Louisville and Texas also have top 50 offenses to match them. What in the world does any of this mean? Well, it’s a short and quick sample to show you that there aren’t many teams out there who are both elite offensively, as well as defensively. It’s college basketball after all, and most of these players won’t play professionally for a reason. College teams are flawed, as are their coaches, and Colorado is no different.
Scan the results from National Champions, Final Four teams, Sweet 16 darlings and even conference champions and you’ll find box scores on the schedule that make you scratch your head to the white meat. How the…
But, and this is where things get interesting today, scan the box scores from NIT teams the last few years as well. You’ll see a lot of good wins, ugly wins and ugly losses. It happens to everyone, and it’s why final scores are so incredibly misleading. Yes, this is a bottom line business, but let’s try to be a bit more enlightened and at least pretend that we have the ability to be rational, critical thinking humans for a few more minutes.
There is no doubt that this CU team has its strengths. Josh Scott, when utilized in the offense, is the most gifted offensive center in the Pac-12, and one of the four or five best in the country on that end. He’s finishing above the rim more consistently than ever in his career, shooting 68.3-percent from the field and 87.9-percent from the charity stripe. Xavier Talton, despite his one-for-six performance on Sunday is still shooting over 40-percent from beyond the arc. The frontcourt trio of Scott, Xavier Johnson and Wes Gordon is averaging right around 20 rebounds a game, and scoring just above 35 points per game. Freshman point guard Dom Collier has a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio and is knocking down open shots, while slowly seeing his role increase.
The team’s weaknesses are also becoming quite apparent. Even with Collier, who I proclaimed on Twitter recently to be the best guard on CU’s roster at the moment—and maybe a bit prematurely—Colorado still doesn’t seem to have a consistent bucket getter from the perimeter. On nights when the opponent packs things in, this team doesn’t have a Dinwiddie who can get to the line at will, or break down the defense efficiently. Turnovers and sloppy play continue to plague this group, in part due to that lack of a consistent perimeter talent. Guys like Gordon and Johnson still have a tendency to float through large portions of games, and besides Tre’shaun Fletcher seeming to have found his jumper, this year’s sophomores look awfully similar to the inconsistent freshman we saw a season ago.
Now, none of that is rocket science or altogether complicated. It’s all in plain sight.
What isn’t so obvious is the true issue behind the mask of this team: There is no real leader on the floor, and Tad Boyle knows it.
When Boyle had Burks and Higgins in his first year, there were two primary ball handlers that, more often than not, could get the team into the right play or at least bail them out when things got rough offensively. Higgins was a consistent force in Boulder over the course of four years, and Burks needed no reminding from a teammate that he could score at will. See, the point here isn’t that those two were able to speak up in the huddle, put together the energy to get a key stop on defense or rally the team’s effort in practice. This isn’t about that kind of leadership. This is about there being no question who to look towards when the proverbial…stuff…hits the fan. It’s about giving the ball to Spencer Dinwiddie in Corvallis or Boulder and saying, “Hey, go do your thing because I trust you.” It’s about getting out of Carlon Brown’s way.
There are going to be nights when that kind of leadership fails, and it might even lose you a game. As I said, even 57 combined points from Higgins and Burks wasn’t enough to win at lowly San Francisco in Boyle’s first year. But that combination, that certainty that no one else on the floor could do what they do, also was instrumental in beating Kansas State three times, a top-ranked Texas team at home (okay, yeah, Levi had a word in that win too) and played Kansas to within seven points twice on the season. Carlon Brown’s group wasn’t invincible either, but not a single Buffs fan would tell you there was a single player on that team more instrumental to winning the Pac-12 Tournament Championship. Despite his slumping performances through a huge stretch of conference play, his teammates never hesitated to give him the ball in the biggest of moments in Los Angeles.
Now, this Colorado team has a talent in Scott that can take over games. He’ll hit his free throws in crunch time, more often than not make the most of opportunities given to him. But that’s why college basketball is about guards. Big men have to rely on their guards to get those opportunities, to open things up underneath enough with timely outside shooting, penetrating attacks that suck in the defense just enough to give a player like Scott the half-second needed to get off a shot.
Askia Booker has been that guard at times through his career, but if we’ve learned anything from the first five games, and the previous three years, it might not be wise to count on that Booker to show up on a nightly basis. After Sunday, Booker told the media, seen on Pac-12 Networks, that his performance in the first four games was largely due to personal matters happening off the court. Perhaps he’s right, and we’ll see more of the 18 points, seven assists and four rebounds he put in against Lipscomb.
Until then, though, we’ll all be waiting to see just who steps up to be “The Guy” for this Buffaloes group. Until then, Colorado will still be a good, but not great, team that will eek out a few rough wins against the Pac-12’s best, but drop games that a veteran team shouldn’t.
Follow Will On Twitter:
https://twitter.com/william_whelan
I mean, 33 points…really?
A week later, and things have slowly come into a bit more focus. Sure, we’re still a ways off from getting a truly accurate read on the team as a whole, which is to be expected as we’ve seen just five games thus far. But we’re getting closer, slowly.
Before I get into my eventual diatribe and inevitable diagnosis as to what it is that we’ve all watched this past week, it’s important to provide some context that is necessary to temper concerns stemming from two uninspiring wins over Air Force and Lipscomb. Every year since Tad Boyle has been in Boulder and leading the Buffaloes, his teams have put up a stinker or two in nonconference play. Remember the 83-81 overtime loss to San Francisco, a game where Cory Higgins and Alex Burks combined to score 57 points, or the eight point opening night win over Idaho State? If not, then you must remember the 85-80 double overtime win over Texas Southern where Omar Strong scored 39 points, including nine trey balls. No? What about the six-point victory over CSU-Bakersfield just a few weeks later? Surely, last year’s eight-point win over an Alan Williams-less UCSB squad, one where Taran Brown dropped eight threes, rings a bell.
The reality of college basketball is that there are few elite teams every year, teams that can go on the road and dominate the way most others do at home. There are few teams in the country who aren’t handicapped offensively once the pace slows down and they’re forced to execute in the half court. Few coaches have the strategic chops to diagram flawless offensive execution and the recruiting ability to enroll the talent to make it all come together.
Colorado would be averaging 76.8 points per game if we wiped the slate clean of their stinker against Wyoming, which of course is an asinine thing to do because it happened and it sucked and there’s not a lot to really be done about it. But this is my article, so I’ll do what I please. Outside of that day North of the Wall, the Buffs would be among the nation’s top 56 teams in scoring offense. By that same token, if we were to remove the outlier from their current stance of 58.2 points surrendered per game, the Buffs would be sitting at a cool 54 points allowed per game, which entering Sunday, was good for No. 12 in the country. Of the top 10 defenses in the country, only Kentucky, Louisville and Texas also have top 50 offenses to match them. What in the world does any of this mean? Well, it’s a short and quick sample to show you that there aren’t many teams out there who are both elite offensively, as well as defensively. It’s college basketball after all, and most of these players won’t play professionally for a reason. College teams are flawed, as are their coaches, and Colorado is no different.
Scan the results from National Champions, Final Four teams, Sweet 16 darlings and even conference champions and you’ll find box scores on the schedule that make you scratch your head to the white meat. How the…
But, and this is where things get interesting today, scan the box scores from NIT teams the last few years as well. You’ll see a lot of good wins, ugly wins and ugly losses. It happens to everyone, and it’s why final scores are so incredibly misleading. Yes, this is a bottom line business, but let’s try to be a bit more enlightened and at least pretend that we have the ability to be rational, critical thinking humans for a few more minutes.
There is no doubt that this CU team has its strengths. Josh Scott, when utilized in the offense, is the most gifted offensive center in the Pac-12, and one of the four or five best in the country on that end. He’s finishing above the rim more consistently than ever in his career, shooting 68.3-percent from the field and 87.9-percent from the charity stripe. Xavier Talton, despite his one-for-six performance on Sunday is still shooting over 40-percent from beyond the arc. The frontcourt trio of Scott, Xavier Johnson and Wes Gordon is averaging right around 20 rebounds a game, and scoring just above 35 points per game. Freshman point guard Dom Collier has a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio and is knocking down open shots, while slowly seeing his role increase.
The team’s weaknesses are also becoming quite apparent. Even with Collier, who I proclaimed on Twitter recently to be the best guard on CU’s roster at the moment—and maybe a bit prematurely—Colorado still doesn’t seem to have a consistent bucket getter from the perimeter. On nights when the opponent packs things in, this team doesn’t have a Dinwiddie who can get to the line at will, or break down the defense efficiently. Turnovers and sloppy play continue to plague this group, in part due to that lack of a consistent perimeter talent. Guys like Gordon and Johnson still have a tendency to float through large portions of games, and besides Tre’shaun Fletcher seeming to have found his jumper, this year’s sophomores look awfully similar to the inconsistent freshman we saw a season ago.
Now, none of that is rocket science or altogether complicated. It’s all in plain sight.
What isn’t so obvious is the true issue behind the mask of this team: There is no real leader on the floor, and Tad Boyle knows it.
When Boyle had Burks and Higgins in his first year, there were two primary ball handlers that, more often than not, could get the team into the right play or at least bail them out when things got rough offensively. Higgins was a consistent force in Boulder over the course of four years, and Burks needed no reminding from a teammate that he could score at will. See, the point here isn’t that those two were able to speak up in the huddle, put together the energy to get a key stop on defense or rally the team’s effort in practice. This isn’t about that kind of leadership. This is about there being no question who to look towards when the proverbial…stuff…hits the fan. It’s about giving the ball to Spencer Dinwiddie in Corvallis or Boulder and saying, “Hey, go do your thing because I trust you.” It’s about getting out of Carlon Brown’s way.
There are going to be nights when that kind of leadership fails, and it might even lose you a game. As I said, even 57 combined points from Higgins and Burks wasn’t enough to win at lowly San Francisco in Boyle’s first year. But that combination, that certainty that no one else on the floor could do what they do, also was instrumental in beating Kansas State three times, a top-ranked Texas team at home (okay, yeah, Levi had a word in that win too) and played Kansas to within seven points twice on the season. Carlon Brown’s group wasn’t invincible either, but not a single Buffs fan would tell you there was a single player on that team more instrumental to winning the Pac-12 Tournament Championship. Despite his slumping performances through a huge stretch of conference play, his teammates never hesitated to give him the ball in the biggest of moments in Los Angeles.
Now, this Colorado team has a talent in Scott that can take over games. He’ll hit his free throws in crunch time, more often than not make the most of opportunities given to him. But that’s why college basketball is about guards. Big men have to rely on their guards to get those opportunities, to open things up underneath enough with timely outside shooting, penetrating attacks that suck in the defense just enough to give a player like Scott the half-second needed to get off a shot.
Askia Booker has been that guard at times through his career, but if we’ve learned anything from the first five games, and the previous three years, it might not be wise to count on that Booker to show up on a nightly basis. After Sunday, Booker told the media, seen on Pac-12 Networks, that his performance in the first four games was largely due to personal matters happening off the court. Perhaps he’s right, and we’ll see more of the 18 points, seven assists and four rebounds he put in against Lipscomb.
Until then, though, we’ll all be waiting to see just who steps up to be “The Guy” for this Buffaloes group. Until then, Colorado will still be a good, but not great, team that will eek out a few rough wins against the Pac-12’s best, but drop games that a veteran team shouldn’t.
Follow Will On Twitter:
https://twitter.com/william_whelan
