Can Colorado maintain momentum through a weeklong break?

BOULDER – It may feel like the 2020-21 basketball season is winding down but Colorado head coach Tad Boyle doesn’t see things that way.

“Look, there’s four seasons in college basketball,” Boyle told reporters after his team’s win over Arizona State Thursday. “You have the preseason, or non-conference portion of your schedule, you have your conference portion–which this year was 20 games for the first time. I thought that our guys handled that, for the most part, pretty well. I really believe we had an opportunity to win this league and we didn’t take care of business in the games we should have won, but you can’t do anything about that now. Now, we go into season number three, which is always the Pac-12 tournament, and then beyond that is season number four which is the NCAA Tournament for this group.”

Colorado is a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, and it’s likely looking at a No. 5 seed unless the Buffs can improve their standing by winning the Pac-12 Tournament. They’ll tip off their first postseason tournament Thursday as the Pac-12’s No. 3 seed against the winner of Stanford and Cal, who play Wednesday.

While Colorado has already locked in its best finish in the Pac-12 and best single-season winning percentage in a over half a century, they were capable of more, as Boyle noted. Losses to the bottom two teams in the Pac-12 were the difference between finishing third and finishing third. If Oregon loses its final game, then Colorado only would’ve needed one of those wins to win the Pac-12 title.

There’s no time for those sorts of missteps anymore.

“It’s win or go home in both of these next two seasons,” Boyle said. “There’s no tomorrow’s, there’s no ‘Oh, we didn’t play well, tonight. We’ll bounce back next Thursday, or Saturday.’ There’s no bounce backs; it’s win or go home. This group wants to win, they’re interested in winning, they care about each other and we have the ability to do that but it doesn’t come easy in March.”

This year’s formula is a little different than years past. The Pac-12 included an empty week before the Pac-12 Tournament so that any games postponed because of COVID-19 could be made up. Colorado’s game against Arizona State on Thursday was one of those makeup games.

But now, Colorado doesn’t play again until next Thursday, while some teams will keep playing through the weekend.

“Usually we’re playing on a Saturday and then playing (in the Pac-12 Tournament) on either a Wednesday or Thursday,”Boyle said. “All I know is, we’re going to use the time as wisely as we can. There are some guys on our team that need to get rested up and take care of some of the banged-up injuries they’ve been fighting down the stretch here. There are other guys on our team that need to get in the gym, get workouts in, get shots up, stay crisp and sharp. Our team, at the appropriate time, needs to get together and work on what we need to work on as we prepare for our game on Thursday, whoever it might be against.”

Star point guard McKinley Wright IV knows how he’s going to use the extra break.

“Limited time seeing family, wearing our mask, standing out the way just, just trying to stay safe,” Wright said. “We got the next two days off. So it’d be important for us to get in the gym by ourselves or with a teammate, get some shots up, maybe get a little extra conditioning, cold tub, hot tub just take care of our bodies at this time of the year.”