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Four Reasons We'll Be Dancing

Goose

Hoops Moderator
Club Member
Junta Member
Alternatively titled "**** the haters".

It seems as if every year, my expectations for the team is lower than a majority of posters here. Usually, the actual is somewhere in between. So this is why I posted my "State of the Fanbase" thread last week - I wanted to see where I lined up with everyone heading in to this year. Surprisingly (at least to me), 63.9% of the posters that voted thought the team would be going to the NIT. Then I talked to Pachoops who said he thinks the Buffs finish 8th in the conference. Then I listened to the BuffStampede podcast previewing the year, and RK, Adam and Zisk all had the Buffs below 20 wins for the year. And Rumblin's preview yesterday didn't have us dancing.

You're all wrong.

buffalodance.gif


It's not going to be easy, and there's a decent chance that come March I'm going to look really stupid, but here are the four reasons I'm saying that we dance.

1.) The Josh's
We all know what Josh Scott can do. He put up 14.5 points and 8.4 rebounds per game last year on an ORtg of 127.1 (15th in the nation) while dealing with severe back issues all season. He put up 19.9 points and 10.6 rebounds a game in the month of March. It's a small sample size, but do you know what they call someone who does that? An All-American. It amazes me that he's not getting more All-Pac-12 love this pre-season. There's a lot of love for Jakob Poeltl - who deserves it - but not Josh. And this confuses me because Poeltl as a freshman put up 9.1 points and 6.8 boards a game on an ORtg of 109.9. Very solid numbers. Solid numbers that are comparable or slightly worse than the 10.2 points, 5.7 boards and ORtg of 111.1 that Jelly put up his freshman year.

On top of Josh Scott, we have Josh Fortune joining the team this year after his redshirt year. It's horrible to use scrimmages to evaluate guys, but I remember thinking after last year's scrimmage that Fortune might be the best player on the court. He's best known for his Big East conference tournament play that helped send the Friers to the dance in 2014, but he put up solid numbers all year. An ORtg of 101.1 isn't great, but it would have been one of the top 5 ratings on the Buffs last year. The big thing about Fortune though is his outside shooting. His eFG% of 52.9% in '14 would have been better than all of the guards on CU's team last year but one - Tre'Shaun Fletcher (who had a 53.1%). Fortune is a low usage guy who will fit in the offense better than Ski ever did, and will provide the outside shooting to open things up for Josh to work down low.

2.) Dom
There are a lot of nerves over the fact that Dom struggled with turnovers in the scrimmage and that he had 9 fouls in another one. I get it. But is anyone seriously convinced that Tad would have kept Dom that aggressive on D after he picked up 2 quick fouls in a real game? Dom is finding his legs right now. He came in as a top 100 recruit with a lot of expectations who had to share a backcourt with a pure gunner and dealt with injuries and suspensions to start the year. It's no wonder he didn't find his legs. He's had an entire training camp, and Tad is making him earn things this year. This is good. The kid has played on US National teams, I think he can handle this. We're still going to see some up and down from him, but a lot more up than down.

3.) "No Your Roll"

One of my favorite locker room stories (that doesn't involve Keith Closs, and no way in hell I'm posting any of those on the board) comes from the book "Seven Seconds Or Less", Alvin Gentry (a former coach at CU) tells the story from his time in Miami where the team was struggling and called a meeting. In this meeting, a player named Ladell Eckles stood up in front of the entire room, went up to the white board and wrote "No your roll" to motivate his teammates. All of them sat there before Glen Rice just said "Sit down, dumbass".

This year's Buff team will know their roles. There's no confusion. Last year, people wondered if it was Ski's team or if Josh or even XJ were going to be the leaders. The team was undergoing an identity crisis and focusing on offense instead of Tadball. This year, it's Josh's team. There are no questions. They're going to be a defensive squad who will win games 50-49. They're going to fight, they're going to claw. Everyone knows their roles, and they will be filling them. Players are at their best when they can just react and don't have to think. This year's team is set up for that.

4.) The Return of #TadBall
TadBall is boring. It's ugly. It makes the baby Jesus cry. But it wins. There has been no talk of offense in training camp, and I love it. I want us doing nothing but defensive drills in training camp and we can have a whole three offensive plays - all of which will involve Josh handling the ball in the post. 53-41, 63-62, 70-59 and 53-51. What do those scores have in common? Those were the scores from the 2012 Pac-12 Tournament games the Buffs played in. All were ugly, but all were fun.

Listen, it's going to be a long season. There is a very good chance that we start the season 0-2. But unlike last year, this year's team has the resiliency to overcome this. Like I said, there's a decent chance that come March people are bumping this to mock me - and I'm fine with that. Because dammit, I want to believe.

CU finishes 5th in the Pac-12 and gets a 10 seed.

Roll Mother****ing Tad.
 
Promoted. I like seeing optimism. If you consider last year as our floor... it makes sense to be cautiously optimistic. Good arguments goose. My main issue is your continued Dom hype. I need to see it. He's the biggest "If' on this team iyam.
 
Promoted. I like seeing optimism. If you consider last year as our floor... it makes sense to be cautiously optimistic. Good arguments goose. My main issue is your continued Dom hype. I need to see it. He's the biggest "If' on this team iyam.

Indeed. The whole season rests on him. I said it a month ago and still believe it to this day.

I just think he's up to it.
 
My tl;dr version of this shared opinion (aka, @Goose saying I could have saved him about 3k words by posting this yesterday :LOL:):

Defend. Rebound. Get the ball to Josh.

Buffs will win 2/3 of its games with that simple formula and will be in the Dance.
 
Big year for Dom to show us his stuff. Looking forward to how Fortune fits in and makes things happen!
 
Can't disagree with anything you wrote (especially since you follow it much more closely than I do.)

I think your 3 and 4 are going to be big. This team last year looked like a team that didn't know what it wanted to be. It looked like a collection of guys who didn't neccessarily enjoy being on the floor with each other.

It was great watching Ski and he put his heart and soul into being a Buff but I think this team will be better without him. Fortune will make up most of his scoring and not have to dominate the ball all the time to do it.

Dom won't have to worry about deferring to Ski. Tad will tell him it's his game to run and he can go with it. XJ getting hurt is a big loss of talent but again may make this a better "team"

With nobody having a star attitude they can focus on playing defense and doing their part on the offensive end. Jelly is a star but doesn't have the selfishness that often goes with it.

Time to come together and make a fresh start and this team could be dancing again. Should be fun to watch.
 
Who is your Tady! Roll ****ing Tad Roll. So looking forward to this season and think this team plays with a chip that is stuff down many teams throats via our tenacious D. Tadball all the way! I also could not agree more that Dom will be the player we need at the point. He will make the leap this year and show everyone why he was a top 100. Our front court will be the strength and it will roll thru Jelly but we will be able to kick out to Fortune and have our best pure shooter since Carlon. I like this team and think we Play D, Rebound, feed Jelly and end up dancing as well.
 
Good stuff @Goose, whole heartedly agree. I really think this has a ton with how Dom does,but not so much his offense rather his defense. I'm all to getting back to TadBall, Dom can be effective enough on offense in the half court, but can he defend in the half court? He's going to have to stop dribble penetration, if he does that he makes everybody else's job easier, if he can't do that it's going to be a long season of dunks and open 3's.
 
Nice job Goose - but would have liked to hear more about George King. :LOL: I'm still not convinced that we are a top-half of the conference team, because of so many variables. But I have hope.

I used to hate TadBall, but I was greedy. I no longer care about aesthetics. Just win!

I was thinking it was about Dom becoming the court general we need (along with a bunch of other ofensive things), but jgisland's point on Dom's defense makes a lot of sense. Defense has to start right there at the top.

Is there anyone else who can handle that defensive role that Spencer occupied? Fortune?
 
Is there anyone else who can handle that defensive role that Spencer occupied? Fortune?

My best hope there is that we use waves of guys. No one on the team (except for Wes) is as good of a defender as Spencer or Dre were. Fortune is a good defender. Fletch is a good defender. King has the potential to be a good defender. It's going to require a team effort.
 
The bottom 2 teams in the conference are UW and WSU this year. Buffs get 4 games. Furd (another 2) should be right there with them. And also USC on the road is imminently winnable. And ASU, a little better and more veteran squad but still mediocre, is at home. Those 8 games (out of 18 Pac-12 games) give the Buffs a tremendous opportunity to finish very high in the standings. Might need to get 7 or even all 8 of them, because the other 10 games (2 vs Cal, UU, UO & OSU, home vs UA, road vs UCLA) will be a battle to even go 3-7 against.
 
The way we've started out on the road, anything is possible. Expecting a 12-1 record (ok maybe 11-2 with one slip-up) and top-20 ranking by the start of conference play.
 
there were several pre-season statements about how Miller had made great improvement. We've seen a little, but not much from him so far. It's like there is another present waiting to be unwrapped.

Pearl's pretty decent comments:

 
"We are going to play against better perimeter teams than Colorado." May be true, but I'd take that as a challenge.

"They didn't want to run with us...(we held them to) 8 fast break points and 13 second chance points."

I kind of felt like he was blaming his defense more than giving CU credit. But that is what a coach should do: Focus on his team an not the opponent.
 
"We are going to play against better perimeter teams than Colorado." May be true, but I'd take that as a challenge.

"They didn't want to run with us...(we held them to) 8 fast break points and 13 second chance points."

I kind of felt like he was blaming his defense more than giving CU credit. But that is what a coach should do: Focus on his team an not the opponent.

He sure mentioned the foul situation a lot, particularly around the 12 minute mark.
 
He sure mentioned the foul situation a lot, particularly around the 12 minute mark.

The officiating was ****ing horrible yesterday - and yeah, it benefited CU more than Auburn overall. They'd go 4 minutes calling everything, 4 minutes calling nothing. No flow what so ever. That was such a bad crew I assumed it was a P12 group.
 
The officiating was ****ing horrible yesterday - and yeah, it benefited CU more than Auburn overall. They'd go 4 minutes calling everything, 4 minutes calling nothing. No flow what so ever. That was such a bad crew I assumed it was a P12 group.
Early on, I thought they were out to get CU. But that all evened out big time. I agree, they were really inconsistent. I thought both sides drew fouls with some pretty obvious flops.
 
I am so excited to see how this team grows. A few things I'll be looking for leading up to PAC play:
  • GMFK to have a few volatile games, giving guys like Fletch, Wes, and Dom the opp to contribute more offensively
  • Increased tenacity on D, and Tad testing a soft press a little more
  • More set plays emphasizing a high-low/inside-out game with purposeful movement to get open looks for Fortune, Talton, and King
  • Working on inbound plays and quicker perimeter passes --> more assists than turnovers
Dom lacks a bit of explosiveness, but he's already shown the chops to create for others while taking opportunities for himself with his pull-up and hesitation game. CU has not had a true PG like this in quite some time (Mayor & Higgins were scorers first, while Tomlinson really only had a spot up offensive skillset).
 
Good call on the soft press. I think they only did it once or twice (and we got burned on a 3 with a bad rotation), but I loved seeing it. I want to see a little of it against Portland Friday.
 
Good call on the soft press. I think they only did it once or twice (and we got burned on a 3 with a bad rotation), but I loved seeing it. I want to see a little of it against Portland Friday.

Would make a huge difference on the half court defense with this shorter shot clock. If the Buffs could use a soft press to get the other team starting its offense 40 feet from the basket with 22 seconds on the shot clock, they're gonna be very tough to score against when Tad's defense hits its stride.
 
Didn't know where else to put this. XJ's injury happened at the end of June. An achilles patient can generally return to full activity in 8 to 9 months. That means he could potentially return, what, late February? So, if we are in a run for the NCAA tournament, would you prefer he use his last year of eligibility for, maybe, a 4 to 6 week run or would you prefer him get totally healthy and return next year? Personally, I think the odds of him coming back, even in early February, and getting back into the flow enough to help are not good enough to risk giving up the remainder of his eligibility. I also think it'd be better for his chances to play professionally if he had a full year under his belt.
 
personally i think XJ will sit the season and come back next. If he makes a full recovery, i think his professional options will be a lot better after he proves that he's healthy and can put the team on his back. With Josh gone, it's hard for me to imagine anyone other than XJ being the leader of the team
 
I have heard nothing on this, but I imagine if XJ sits out this year, he won't be back next year.
 
This team appears to be much more cohesive this year than last. Why is that?
 
The officiating was ****ing horrible yesterday - and yeah, it benefited CU more than Auburn overall. They'd go 4 minutes calling everything, 4 minutes calling nothing. No flow what so ever. That was such a bad crew I assumed it was a P12 group.

Early season college refs FTW! Going to be painful like normal, especially with whatever new rules they'll enforce until the new year and then forget about.
 
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