Doubt and Faith

On a cold and clear Saturday night, just a tic over two months after firing their 27th head coach, Colorado Football hired their 28th. But unlike #27, or any of the other 26 that proceeded him, the news of #28 hit BuffsNation with the positive force of an avalanche tumbling down off the high Rockies.

Deion Sanders is coming to Boulder.

Yes, *that* Deion Sanders. Prime Time, Neon Deion, Leon Sandcastle, Coach Prime. NFL Hall of Famer, football immortal, high stepper of high steppers. The man who can stand on the same commercial stage as Nick Saban and not feel out of place. The man who can pull 5-stars to Jackson State and build a conference-championship-winning juggernaut seemingly overnight. All of that. He's coming *here*.

Immediately, his arrival promises good things to come. In the era of NIL and the transfer portal, the pipeline sucking talent out and away from Folsom Field will suddenly back up with 4- and 5-star recruits and transfers. There will be national media attention, splashy documentaries, and a sudden uptick in attendance and support for the program. And, above all else, there will be winning football. In the span of a week, the Colorado Football Program has gone from dead at the line with a blown transmission to 185 mph and back in the race.

We're in for a wild ride.

It's easy to doubt. I certainly did. I doubted Rick George. I doubted the University of Colorado's financial capabilities (hell, just look at the previous post on this blog). I doubted the school's administration and its commitment to supporting athletics through transfer rule changes. I doubted the lingering attractiveness of the football program. I doubted that Coach Prime would even be interested.

I doubted.

I doubted, among other things, because of 70-3. Because of Dan Hawkins and his 2008 recruiting class. Because of Jon Embree and Eric Bieniemy running a QB sneak on 1st down in 2012; the utter collapse of the Rise into smoke and mirrors; Mel Tucker's late-night bolt to East Lansing; and Milquetoast Karl Dorrell's euthanasia-cum-football program. The list goes on and on. If "you are what your record says you are," then Colorado is a 1-11 program, 61-117 over the last 15 years with just 2 winning seasons to show for it (and I'm being kind in counting 2020). I had reasons, but I doubted.

Faith? Well, that's a lot harder. Like a muscle, you have to work on faith to build it. And it's easy to lose the strength gained if you let it lie fallow. I want to have faith again. I want to believe it will work, if only for the sake of the Boulder Community.

See, the last few years have been difficult for Boulder. I'm not saying it's been easy elsewhere -- certainly, Coach Prime would be quick to point out that Jackson, MS, where he's coming from, can barely supply clean water to the town -- but Boulder's been through some stuff. COVID lockdowns, the horror of the 2021 Table Mesa shooting, and last December's Marshall Fire. The community's been hurting. I trust in faith that this hope, this energy we're all feeling at this moment can help salve some of those emotional wounds.

Coach Prime certainly has faith, and I'm not just talking about religion. He took this job, by all accounts, sight unseen. There was no "food cart" moment of him sneaking in to try the coat on for size. He came in Saturday night to see Folsom Field and the Champions Center for the first time having already accepted the job. Sanders was eager for the opportunity to take the step to Power 5 football, leverage his advantages, and succeed. Rick George and his team sold Sanders on the vision, on the opportunity, and Prime took it on faith that Colorado could help him deliver. He has faith in his ability to perform, and he is committed.

I should take a lesson from that. Whether it's "shoot your shot," "believe in yourself," or whatever mantra you want to use, it's a powerful statement in self-belief.

I will admit, doubt still lingers inside, like a coiled snake ready to pounce. Is this too much juice too fast? Will the foundation support the weight of expectations being placed upon it? What happens two years from now, be it success or failure, if it's time to move on? Boulder has shown to struggle with the national spotlight before, is this town ready for all that's to come in the next few years?

But doubt is easy. I'm ready for the hard work of learning to have faith in Folsom Saturdays again. 

I'm ready to have faith in Coach Prime.

Considering Karl Dorrell's Termination Clause

So, the football program is in rough shape.  I mean really rough shape.  0-3 to start the year, outscored 128-30 (52-7 over the three 2nd halves), outgained by an average of 173 yards per game kind of rough shape.  The kind of rough shape where you can make the statistical argument that this is *the worst* iteration of Colorado Football across more than 120 years of competition.  

Indeed, Sports-Reference has the 2022 Buffs as an adjusted -18.21 points below average. That's the worst in program history by some margin, with the 2012 Buffs their closest comparison at -12.66.  Before that, you have to go back to the late 1910s to find comparatively worse squads.  Even the worst Chuck Fairbanks team, a man who is famous for having lost to Drake... twice, is considered to be a relative 11 points per game better than this bunch.

Oh, and Pac-12 play hasn't even started yet.

This all comes on the heels of a pretty lousy 2021 season, where the Buffs stumbled to a 4-8 finish.  Overall, I think it's plain to say that the fortunes of the program have very clearly been declining since the day head coach Karl Dorrell was hired in February of 2020.

Naturally, with all that in mind, you might be inclined to consider a change at the head coaching spot to be the cure, as any normal fan would.  Hell, Nebraska and Arizona State did, and they aren't nearly as bad on the field as the Buffs are.

Well... as in all cases, the money is the thing.  It costs cold, hard cash to fire a football coach.  So, exactly how much money are we talking about? Well, for that answer, we can turn to the contact.  As Colorado is a public institution, it is a publicly-available document, which you can find here or here.

In reading for the final number, the assumption is that Dorrell would be fired "without cause." i.e., that he would be fired for on-field football performance reasons, rather than something involving a criminal offense, insubordinate conduct, fraud, severe NCAA violations, violation of campus laws, gambling, endangering student-athlete health, or any of the other reasons covered under Paragraph 12.  As such, his termination would fall under paragraph 13 of the contract, which I have re-produced below.

Now, I am not a lawyer.  If you feel the need, please do reach out to one for advice in reading this document.  However, as a layman, I think the salient parts for this discussion are a (iii), b, d, and e.

• a (iii) -- The damages that Dorrell can seek for termination without cause are limited to the full-dollar value of his contract.  For example, if he was fired after 12/31/2021, but before 12/31/22, he's owed a maximum of $11.4 million, less whatever he's earned up to that point in 2022.  The Daily Camera's Brian Howell estimated that means the real-dollar buyout is about $8.7 million, as of 9/17.  That number decreases with every paycheck that is sent his way.
• b -- After termination, Dorrell would be expected to actively seek other football-related employment, including assistant coaching positions or work in media commentary.  The salary value of that employment would be used to offset the overall value of the buyout.
• d -- After termination, Dorrell would need to file a claim for the value of this buyout.  Then, there would be a 60-day mediation window for the university and Dorrell to come to an agreement on the final terms.  This would allow the university to potentially negotiate and mitigate the full impact of what is owed. Otherwise, Dorrell would need to pursue legal remedies.
• e -- Whatever the mediated/adjudicated final amount, Dorrell would be paid out in monthly installments between the settlement/judgment date and the original end date of the contract, 12/31/24.

So, CU would need to come up with a maximum of ~$8.7 million to fire Coach Dorrell today.  There would be offsets, there would be potential limitations through mediation, and the final amount would be paid out over the next two-plus years.  However, regardless of the final total, it would be multiple millions of dollars per year out of a budget that is already bleeding red ink.

Indeed, it's an amount of money that, at least as far as I can tell, the Athletic Department does not have. In 2021, the department reported a nearly $17.5 million deficit, helped along by over $48 million in revenue loss YoY from 2020, almost entirely due to COVID impacts. Sure, plenty of programs across the country are recovering from similar-sized holes in their ledgers, but Colorado has rarely, if ever, shown the donor liquidity typically needed to plug such gaps.

This leads to Atheltic Director Rick George's statement from 9/18/22.  In the text, a tight three paragraphs of media relations jargon, George acknowledges that the on-field results have been disappointing and that the fanbase deserves better results.  That he "hears" the cries from the fanbase for action, and confirms that the program is not meeting expectations. However, he concludes with a request for support for the student-athletes.  The word "support" is even duplicated in that final sentence.

Assuredly, "support" in this context is not singing the fight song.  No, this is a plea for two things.  1) please don't boo the kids on game days or continue to harangue the interns covering the social media accounts. 2) CU is in desperate need of financial "support" as a predicate to take action.  

Point 1 is fair enough.  The displeasure is clear and understood, shaming the kids on the field or in the SID office further won't help things.  Point 2, however, is less so.  

Colorado's contract offer of February 2020 made Dorrell the 3rd-highest paid coach in the Pac-12 at the time.  That move seemed to come as a direct response to whispers that the program didn't have the money or institutional financial support to compete at a high level.  But it didn't seem destined to actually improve the football program.  Dorrell was not an in-demand coaching name, having floated around various position coaching roles since being blasted out of the UCLA head job in 2007 for going 35-27 over five seasons. No one was fighting Colorado for this hire, least of all his then-employer, the Miami Dolphins. 

CU, as the world was slipping into a pandemic and related recession, had gone out and over-paid for a coach with a relatively unimpressive NFL-adjacent resume to silence rumors that they were too poor to compete.  Oh, and they threw in a strong buyout clause for good measure, too, as a frenzied reaction to the way their previous coach, Mel Tucker, had bolted in the middle of the night. (I should note, that clause was specifically lauded by at least one regent when the contract was approved, which makes me think it could've been an institutional ask, rather than just George flailing on the rebound).

It was a contract offer that was a mistake before the ink dried.  

With that in mind, will CU donors really be willing to foot another multi-million dollar bill, one stemming from a hire that was laughably out-of-touch with reality and value when it was made? Handing yet another swing to an AD who has failed on now two hires at the only sport he's really held to account over?  Would the Regents?

I doubt it.

And, if it isn't coming from donors and isn't coming from the Regents, just where would this $8.7 million over ~27 months come from?

Until an answer to that question can be found, Karl Dorrell has the safest job in the country.

On the 2022 non-conference schedule

OK, so I went and did something today that I typically try to avoid -- I posed a speculative statistical opinion about Colorado Basketball without actually doing the research.

My tweet:

"[...] Tennessee aside (#9 in KP last year), this may be the softest non-con schedule Tad has put together while at CU. No judgment, it's hard to build a schedule, and a 20-game P12 slate leads you in this direction, but yo. Utah-esque."

Normally, I'd have actually looked at some records and some stats before positing something like that.  Today? No, not so much. That's my bad.

So, to make up for my error, I've cracked open the KenPom files and done some digging to try and actually understand this year's non-conference schedule, insofar as it compares to the rest of the Tad Boyle era.

The Context

CU released its 2022-23 non-conference basketball schedule at the start of the month; you can find it here. Just today, the Pac-12 released their conference weekly pairings, giving us fans a near-complete picture of the schedule. 

There are, to be completely straight, a dearth of "headline" programs in the non-conference portion.  This season, Colorado will be playing UC Riverside, @ Grambling, @ Tennessee (Neutral), Yale, CSU, North Alabama, Northern Colorado, and Southern Utah in their non-con.  This is in addition to three teams in their MTE, one of which will be UMass. 

To be fair, three of those teams (Tennessee, Yale, and CSU) made the NCAA Tournament last March, with two others (Northern Colorado and Southern Utah) making lesser non-conference postseason appearances (CBI and CIT, respectively).  Additionally, in the MTE, Colorado could see teams like Texas A&M and Boise St if the bracket falls the right way, who each were postseason entrants in March of 2022.

Still, at first blush, it's a soft schedule. Uninspiring, certainly.  A group of directional detritus that I would otherwise needle a conference opponent for drawing up.

But, is it really the softest that Tad and his staff have drawn up while at Colorado?

Wait, what is an MTE?

MTEs, or Multi-Team-Events, allow coaches to add in a non-conference tournament or similar to supplement their schedules. Often taking place in far-flung exotic locales (like Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, or the Bahamas), they're exceedingly common place, and rare is the major program's schedule that doesn't include one (Colorado's last season without an MTE was 2013-14).

Normally, NCAA rules limit a college schedule to 29 regular season games (plus exhibitions, either public or private).  However, by including a three-game MTE in your schedule, you can cram in a maximum of 31 games.  It comes at a cost, though: you're at the mercy of the MTE for your opponents, the bracket, etc.  

This year's example for Colorado is the Myrtle Beach Invitational (tickets on sale now!), which I will be attending in mid-November.

The Methodology

I thought the quickest and fairest way to quantify the difficulty of a given year's schedule was to average the *previous* year's final KenPom ranking of each team on the slate.  i.e., if I was looking at the 2013-14 season's schedule, I would compare it against the final KP rankings from 2012-13. 

Why did I do it that way?  Why not look at pre-season rankings or final rankings from the year in question? Why not something more complicated with weighting and such?

Well, first, KP doesn't keep his old pre-season rankings in a handy format that I can find. I imagine that's because his pre-season rankings are the result of as much statistical guesswork and calculus as hard data, but I digress.

As to eschewing final rankings from the actual year of the schedule? Well, I'll concede it's a flawed method, particularly in a sport where many programs can turn over dramatically year-to-year. However, I feel it's the most reliable way to understand the context behind the schedule heading into each season, rather than trying to justify against the results.  My purpose, after all, is to understand how this year's schedule can be viewed, not how it will. The *actual* difficulty of the current schedule is unknown, and won't be known until the end of December. I can't then compare that unknown against a known quantity, so I am trying and contextualize the 2022 numbers against something similar.

See, in any given season, there are breakout teams and disappointments that can have a dramatic effect on the final value of a schedule. Take last year's meeting with Milwaukee, for example. The Panthers, coming into the season, were viewed a dark horse candidate for an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament. They were highly thought of, boasting some veteran components and an anticipated NBA lottery pick in Patrick Baldwin, Jr.  Baldwin, however, never showed that presumed promise under his father's (Head Coach Pat Baldwin) tutelage, struggling with injuries (only played 11 games for Milwaukee) and poor performances throughout the year. Without expected returns from their star, the Panthers, 120th in the preseason KenPom ratings, finished a dreadful 335th nationally.  In retrospect, that's a black hole on the schedule, a game that is a NET anchor.  However, headed into last season, it was a game that was rightfully looked at as a potential NET booster.

This kind of goes back to why I disregard the notion that you can use March results to justify the regular season narrative -- you can't let the ends justify the means.  Just because a schedule *turned out* to be difficult, doesn't mean that difficulty would've been appreciated in October.  So, to filter out that noise, I looked back at the final results of the previous seasons -- that's the context under which the coaching staff would've built the calendar, so that's how I will judge it.  

In the end, I decided to ignore home vs road or other weighting options.  I could've added in a modifier, similar to how the RPI and the NET have accounted for home/road splits in the past, but... *sigh* I've got a day job, OK?

Next, I needed to consider the impact of the MTE.  Going into the year, some of the games are fixed (CU knows they'll face UMass this season, for example), whereas others are the result of games played outside of CU's control.  So, how to account for that?  Well, I averaged out the entirety of the MTE, cognisant of any fixed games, but otherwise accounting for all teams that CU *could've* played.  That gave me a KP "value" for the MTE.  I then factored that into the rest of the schedule, slotting in that "value" by the maximum # of games that were to be played.

Finally: exclusions. I excluded the 2020-21 season, which was scheduled amidst the chaos of COVID, for obvious reasons.  I also excluded any exhibitions or other non-D1 games played (New Orleans in 2011 is an example here). And, I also excluded Tad's first year, 2010, from the list because I didn't think it fair, given that he signed on in April, and, I would assume, many of the games had already been scheduled.

If, after all of that, you have problems with the methodology... OK?  Hey, it's a free country, prove me wrong and do it yourself.

The Results

Well, long story short, I should've looked at the data, first, before saying something stupid -- let that be a lesson to all of you! While the 2022 non-conference schedule doesn't shape up to be the strongest of the Tad Boyle era, it certainly isn't the worst.  See below:

Woof, 2018 was awful.  That was a year bereft of any high-major teams in the non-conference slate.  Other than CSU, the home headliner that year was... I guess Drake?  Even the MTE that year was a bust, with CU going 1-2 against a middling group of Indiana State, Hawai'i, and Charlotte.  The less said of that the better.

2013, on the other hand, was interestingly the only year that CU didn't schedule a full MTE. Tad made up for that with a pair of high-profile neutral site one-off games -- Against Baylor in Dallas and Oklahoma State in Las Vegas -- which combined nicely with the home tilt against Kansas (Ski for 3) to beef up the numbers.

Ultimately, 2022 is pretty much middle-of-the-road.  Lacking a home marquee event, sure, but otherwise on par with what we've seen, historically.  It's also solidly *stronger* than last season's, thanks to a potentially hefty MTE which boasts a field deeper than any CU has played in since 2011.

So, to Tad and staff, I apologize and take back my complaint from earlier today.

A screencap of my full sheet can be found below, for those interested:

OK, but why?

Why did I do this?  Well, to answer that itch in my brain that was telling me I hadn't shown my work.  
Also, I wanted to better understand this year's schedule in context.


No, why is scheduling like this?

It's important to understand that, as opposed to football where the AD negotiates the schedule (often a decade-plus in advance of kickoff), the basketball schedule is largely set by the coaching staff within a calendar year of the game to be played. That makes it not only complicated and personal to the staff that's running the program -- it can make or break a season before it even gets started -- but a competitive rush against other like-minded programs to get games on the schedule.

In the end, a *lot* of behind-the-scenes work goes into putting together the games we get to watch each fall, work that is ultimately a thankless task.  Too easy a schedule: the fans complain (*waves*) and ticket sales suffer.  Too hard a schedule: the team takes its knocks and you end up with a worse record than you "should."  You have to schedule for your roster, after all.

Then, there's other context to consider.  First, there's a finals week in the middle of December; probably shouldn't be playing a high-leverage NET game that week, let alone traveling.  Oh, and don't forget that the Pac-12 moved to a 20-game conference schedule a few years back.  That means two conference games taking up space in your early-season calendar; games that you *really* should be winning.  That means less incentive to schedule marquee dates that could coincide with a difficult road trip to, say, Washington (December 4th, btw).

What's more, there's an undeclared factor here: no teams worth a damn want to come to the CEC for a game. Unless Colorado gives up more than just a return trip (i.e., a 2-for-1, or a home-and-home plus a semi-road neutral, like with Tennessee), Top-40 programs won't answer the phone call.  Hell, even smart programs in the 41-100 range wouldn't willingly come to the Foot of the Flatirons if they can avoid it.  Why play at the 5th-toughest venue in the country if you don't have to?  There are other places you can go to boost your NET where you might actually win.

That leaves the UC Riversides and North Alabamas of the world; those just looking for a "buy game", aka a paycheck (queue Rothstein and the epitome of brutality...).  And so that's who ends up on the schedule.  Throw in a few games dictated by existing contracts (CSU, @ Grambling, Tennessee), a few regional foes (Northern Colorado, Southern Utah), juggle the Pac-12 games and finals week and *poof*, there you go.

On the 20th Anniversary of 60-59

This coming basketball season marks an important milestone in Colorado Basketball history -- the 20th anniversary of the 2002-03 team. As such, it's time to open old wounds and dig into some Big 8/XII scar tissue. 

Kansas, once, was the measuring stick by which CU men's hoops were routinely found to be inadequate. KU was, and still is, a national power, one of the true blue-bloods of the sport; comparatively, the Buffs have never been either. Their meetings reinforced that dichotomic status quo of haves and the have-nots: Kansas had, Colorado had not.

Yet, in spite of the disparity in pedigree and prestige, from Colorado's joining of the Big 8 in 1947 until their exit from the Big XII in 2011, the two played regularly. Each year, the Buffs would get two or three shots against the Jayhawks, and, most years, they'd get that measuring stick upside the back of their heads for their efforts. It became a sticking point; a hump that CU could never seem to get over. In a recent conversation, Neill Woelk (formerly of the Daily Camera, now with CUBuffs.com) even referred to them as Colorado's "white whale." ^[1]

You see, the history of Colorado v Kansas on the hardwood is not really a rivalry, in the traditional sense. More a Sisyphean reflection of the BasketBuffs' decades-long struggle with relevance, one that has only gotten more extreme with time. Let me put it this way: in his four years as a player at Kansas in the early 80s, Tad Boyle suffered more losses to Colorado (3) than the Jayhawks have experienced, all-told, from 1992 to the present (2). KU's slips against their former Big 8/XII "rivals" were already rare by the time the 90s rolled into town (they lead the overall series 124-40), but since February of 1991, the 'Squawks have gone 47-2 against the Buffs with an average margin of victory of over 18 points.

Hammer, meet nail.^[2]

The annual tilt in Boulder was, typically, the most painful, as Colorado would put up a wilful fight before succumbing in the end. What's more, a full 30-50% of the arena would be clad in red and blue, and all Buffalo faithful would have to suffer that damn chant. In the late-aughts, I myself witnessed more than a few of the season ticket holders around me swapping colors -- one week loosely cheering for CU, the next noisily rooting for the neighbor to the east. It was not uncommon for Kansas fans, including, as I found out in our conversation, Woelk's father, to hold CU season tickets simply for that one night a year when KU would come to Boulder: 

"My dad was from Kansas, moved to Colorado. He grew up a Kansas basketball fan.  Every year, I would get him tickets to the Colorado/Kansas game.  And I finally ended up buying him season tickets to CU basketball just so my dad could come to one game a year. I just remember telling him how much I hated that KU chant… he would get a huge kick out of that.”

An unfortunate reality: the Buffs weren't even the headliner in their own building.

By that measure, there are some parallels to Colorado's great rivalry on the gridiron -- their annual fracas with former national power Nebraska. As was reinforced in 2019, a lot of red suddenly appears in Folsom anytime the Huskers come to town. It's what made those games so tense -- as a Buff fan, you desperately wanted to win just to see those invaders sitting next to you look so glum. Hell, that yearning for schadenfreude is why this remains such an indelible image in the CU/NU rivalry to this day. 

With the Nubs and football, at least, Colorado has enjoyed some recent success. A breakthrough win against the Corn in 1986 helped propel the Buffs to a national title a few years later, and, since 2001, the Buffs have beaten back the red tide as many times as they've been flummoxed, going 6-6. In basketball, against frickin' Kansas, however, CU has not been nearly as successful.

So, for a school that has 62-36 metaphorically etched into the keystone of Norlin Library, it stands to reason that those two out of 49 against Kansas are worth mentioning if you care in the slightest about Colorado Basketball. 

Now, any modern CU fan worth their salt is keenly aware of the latter of the two, the Ski-for-Three madness of December 7th, 2013.^[3] What, then, of the former? What, then, of January 22nd, 2003?

If you're already familiar, it's probably because you were there. Comparatively, Askia's Miracle is easily accessible for those new to Black and Gold religion. Pac-12 Network has it on their decaying platform about a dozen times per season if you're interested in re-living that one. But, the win in '03? I dare you to try and find all but the barest of hints online. Believe me, I had looked. Unless you were willing to pay for access to the Daily Camera and Denver Post print archives (like I was), the best you could do was a few AP articles linked on the CU website and the mirrored articles on ESPN. Certainly, there were no highlights to be found online; YouTube has nothing that I could find. Even pictures from the game are difficult to come across.

How? How could one of the biggest victories in modern Colorado Basketball history get so lost in the internet shuffle?

Well, not anymore. Approaching the 20th anniversary of its birth, I lay 60-59 to rest with a full In Memoriam.  I'll cover Colorado's program history in the preceding years and the 2002-03 season's outlook; I'll review both teams' performance that year and how they stood coming into the night of January 22nd, 2003; I'll even touch on the series beef each team brought with them into the game that night; of course, I'll break down the game itself (with the help of some archival footage); and, finally, I'll wrap-up with a discussion of the aftermath. There are even endnotes and a full sources list!

So, strap in. It's a long and winding ride. Best consumed with a beer in hand...

Let's go!

Some idle thoughts after Saturday.

I think it was about the time that KJ Simpson pulled up for a “fuck-it-why-not” three-pointer, a little over halfway into the 2nd frame of CU’s stunning 79-63 win over #2 Arizona, that I realized what was happening.  

Simpson’s thunderbolt 24-footer was the result of a broken play.  With the Buffs up 58-50 at the time, Nique Clifford lost the handle in the backcourt, leading to a four-man scramble onto the hardwood.  Somehow, Nique and KJ combined to regain possession, with Nique flipping the ball back to KJ at the top of the arc.  The freshman spark plug, who had spurned a commitment to the UofA for life in Boulder, spun and twisted, looking for an opening before putting up a hand to let his teammates know to reset.  It was at that point he realized that the Arizona defense had screwed up – in their haste to get back into position, confusion on the wing had left Simpson all alone.  All but shrugging, KJ rose and fired, splashing the effort and setting the CU Events Center to boil.  Buffs now up eleven, never to look back.

Up until that point, I had been humming along, enjoying the ride, and simply appreciative that we fans were not held witness to a repeat of last Thursday’s debacle against Arizona State.  I was taking solace in the fact that the Buffs were showing good fight; that the program icon of program icons, Evan Battey, wasn’t going to see his Senior Day ruined by a schlubby performance. I could come to terms with this end to a season of ups, downs, and all-arounds, even if the mighty Cats from the desert eventually pulled it out in the end.

But, when that shot went in – turning a failed possession into three points – it dawned on me: holy shit, this is actually happening.  The Buffs are going to win.

You see, it’s not every day that the #2 team in the country rolls into town only to roll back out with a loss.  Sure, I’ve seen ‘Zona take a whupping or two in Boulder before – they’re now 2-7 at the Foot of the Flatirons since 2012, of course – but this was not a ‘typical’ version of Arizona.  This was #2 in the polls, #2 in Kenpom Arizona.  We haven’t seen an Arizona team this good since the Giant Death Robot days of 2014 and ‘15, and it was those teams that won their two trips to Boulder by a combined 55 points.  And yet, all that efficiency and aura meant nothing.

Neither did the previous matchup between these two teams seem to mean a thing.  That entrant in the diary, a 21-point CU loss in Tucson from back in mid-January, shared little in common with what was displayed on the hardwood Saturday night, save a feisty performance from KJ Simpson.  Throw that baby out with the bathwater, as well.

No, the Buffs who took the floor on 2/26/22 were a completely different beast.  They were feisty, they were aggressive, they were mean.  They would not be punked in the backcourt, or over-run in the front.  Whether it was attacking the rim (CU had 54 points in the paint against the nation’s second-best 2ptFG% defense), fighting on the boards (holding the Cats to rebounding parity, 30-30), or eating souls on defense (held one of the country’s most efficient offenses to under 40% from the floor), Colorado would not back down on Saturday.  They dictated, they hounded. They made Arizona look soft, not the other way around.

Even if this was an aberrance, even if these two meet again in Las Vegas next week and the tables are turned, this was an important moment.  This was the Colorado Buffaloes, young and lean, learning to hold their own against a monster of the conference.  This is a win that will reverberate in the coming years, paying dividends when the likes of Simpson and Clifford are veterans leading the way.

It’s a win to savor. 

–

My view was perfect.  Buffs win, crowd storms, Senior Day festivities commenced through the din of excited undergrads.  Then, the storybook finish we had all hoped for took form.

Evan Battey, the ebullient heart-and-soul of the Black and Gold, hoisted himself up on top of the sideline signage to take in the adoring masses.  He stood above and apart, yet at the same time existing as one with his audience. A king and his subjects, a mayor and his city. 

The image, as they say, was worth a thousand words.

Evan thanked everyone.  God, his family, his teammates.  Committed to returning, to one day becoming the head coach of the program he had helped define for the last five years.  Tears were shed.

It was a perfect moment.  A program-defining moment from a program-defining individual.  The bear of a power forward, on (and all apologies to Elijah, Will, and Benan) *his* Senior Day, had willed his teammates to a spectacular, singular moment in Colorado Basketball history.  His 11/4/1/2 line, as was typical, belying his over-sized impact on the program and its proceedings.  Then, in one last gift, plastering our memories with an indelible image of joy and success against all odds.  Life, once again, contriving to one-up any pretense of fiction.

Much like Evan, Saturday was unique, never to be duplicated.  I hope you were there.  I hope you got to take it all in.

–

This season is not over.  There’s still the regular-season finale in Utah, the trip to Vegas, and a probable postseason berth of some kind (most likely the NIT) to look towards.  But it’s worth our time, even with games remaining, to take stock of what this year has brought us.

This was not meant to be a thriving campaign.  Sure, Tad and the guys all said the right things in October, about competing for championships, etc.  But, given the roster turnover (McKinley Wright to the NBA, Jeriah Horne back to Tulsa, and D’Shawn Schwartz and Dallas Walton to greener pastures out east), and the fact that Colorado is, as ever, a recruit and develop program, the expectation was that of a re-set clock, rather than a continuation of last season's highs.  2020-21 was meant to be the peak, now back to The Rise.  See you in two or three years.

Instead, what we’ve gotten is a season of defied expectations.  “Young teams can’t win on the road.”  Boom, five true road wins in conference, with a potential sixth still on the table. “Maybe a bottom-half finish in conference with a sub-.500 record.” Boom, a minimum 11 wins in the league, and almost all but assured no worse than 5th-place finish in the Pac-12.  You cannot argue with these results.  

Certainly not, given that the crown jewel of the league's best incoming recruiting class, Lawson Lovering, endured significant growing pains before seeing his season end in late January; his class-mate, and fellow four-star prospect, Quincy Allen, was lost for the year before the season even tipped off; and the expected Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, and one of only two initial scholarship seniors, Elijah Parquet, missed the final month and a half of the season.  This was a season played with one hand tied behind CU’s collective backs, and yet they produced a surging effort, now culminating in an impressive final stretch.  

There’s only one result on the calendar that really falls wrong – that loss at home to Arizona State.  Every other result either met with expectations or exceeded them, more or less.  That, in and of itself, is to the credit of Tad Boyle and staff.  They led the young Buffs well, avoiding too many pitfalls.  Could I have asked for a better home record?  Sure.  Would I have liked to see more complete performances @ Washington or @ Washington State?  Yeah.  But the whole picture is one of a young team over-performing the expectations.  If this was meant to be the rebuilding year, the transition year to the next surge of Colorado Basketball, then I can’t wait to see the finished product.

If you can’t appreciate that, given the circumstances, I really don’t know what to say – maybe you should try watching, or commenting, on something else. 

Let me just save this over here...

Don't mind me, just saving this for posterity...