BOULDER — Colorado Buffaloes head coach Tad Boyle is learning a lot about his team.
“As I looked at our schedule when the season started, I looked at this week being like, ‘Okay, this is gonna be a litmus test for us to see where we’re at,'” Boyle said on Monday.
For the second time this week, Colorado is gearing up for its toughest test of the young season.
On Sunday, the Buffaloes knocked off Stanford in their first conference game of the year, improving their record to 6-1. Stanford was ranked No. 90 in KenPom, more than 50 places higher than any team the Buffs had faced in the season’s first three weeks.
On Wednesday, Colorado will take on the UCLA Bruins in Westwood. They’re ranked No. 5 in the country and No. 8 in KenPom.
On Saturday, the Buffs will be back in Boulder to take on No. 12 Tennessee.
The shift from lowly opponents to facing some of the best teams in the country, means a shift in how Boyle approaches these games.
“You can spend a little too much time on your opponent, and if you do that, you forget about what you need to get done,” Boyle said. “I think it depends on your talent level. If you’ve got more talent than the team you’re playing, you’ve just got to concentrate on what you’re doing. If you do what you’re supposed to do, that should take care of itself. When you’re playing against teams that are more talented than you, now the game planning might becoming a little bit more important because you’ve got to take away their strengths.”
Part of that game planning is picking out the matchups you want to see on the court. The Buffs’ roster is deep with young talent, but there isn’t enough playing time to go around as Boyle pares down his rotation. The big minutes have to go to the proven players.
“It’s game-to-game, it’s matchups,” Boyle said. “You get late in the game and you go with the guys that you feel like you’re gonna have the most experience and they’re going to make the most plays. If they do it, you look pretty good as a coach. They don’t and you’ve got people second-guessing you and you start second-guessing yourself.”
The rotation is far from set in stone, though it’s much more condensed than it was at the beginning of the season, and fewer players are going to get the chance to prove themselves on a nightly basis.
“If they play better in practice and they play better in a game, they’re gonna play more. That’s the bottom line,” Boyle said. “I’m gonna do whatever I can to help this team win games. That’s my job. And I told our guys I love every one of them. I want to play you guys more minutes, but not at the expense of losing games.”
Against Stanford, only four players came off the bench. Nique Clifford played 14 minutes. Lawson Lovering played eight minutes. Luke O’Brien played four minutes.
Freshman point guard K.J. Simpson, the conference’s freshman of the week, led the bench with 20 minutes and scored 12 of the bench unit’s 17 points.
“K.J. played well last night (against Stanford),” Boyle said. “I would like to play him down the stretch, he’s just—defensively—still trying to gain confidence in his ability. And Stanford was really, really big. UCLA is really, really big. Now we’re going to play teams—Oregon State—we’re going to be able to play K.J. and Keeshawn (Barthelemy) together a lot more.”
Those decisions can make the difference between another tick in the win column, or one in the loss column.
“There’s such a fine line, sometimes, between winning and losing that I don’t think people understand,” Boyle said.
Boyle’s example of that concept is last year’s UCLA team. Before going on a magical run to the Final Four, the Bruins had lost four games in a row; three to close out their conference schedule and then their first game of Pac-12 Tournament.
One of those losses came in Boulder on CU’s Senior Night.
“We made more plays down the stretch than they did and we won,” Boyle said. “That’s what it’s going to come down to, I really believe it. But you have to make plays. You have to beat UCLA because they’re not going to beat themselves.”
Six of Colorado’s seven games this season have come down to the final minute. A couple have gone to overtime. Of those six games, Colorado has come out on top five times.
“We should be confident but I also know it’s not easy,” Boyle said. “I think the more situations we’re in, the more confident we’ll get.”
The ability to win games late, especially for such a young team, is a good sign. The fact that the games are so close against inferior opponents is not such a good sign. The margin for error will become slimmer as Colorado takes on two tough foes.
The Buffaloes aren’t going to run.
“We respect everybody and we fear nobody,” Boyle said.
