“One game at a time” starts in Utah

It’s March.

That means that for the next 20- or 30-something days, you’re going to hear one phrase more than any other: one game at a time.

“If you have one bad game or one bad outing — or on the other hand, you get hot — that’s why they call it madness,” Colorado Buffaloes head coach Tad Boyle said earlier this week.

“It’s one game at a time.”

Colorado was supposed to thrive in “one game at a time” scenarios.

The narrative surrounding this team from October through January was that it knew how to handle business. The Buffs were veterans; they could pull out gritty wins when needed to stay atop the Pac-12 and they were at their best when they needed to bounce back from losses in order to keep pace.

Then, the narrative changed.

The Buffs didn’t bounce back against Cal after they loss to UCLA. They didn’t bounce back against Stanford after their loss to Cal. Whatever chip was on their shoulder — maybe the widespread belief both locally and nationally that Colorado couldn’t actually compete with the big dogs — disappeared.

They stopped defending, they stopped rebounding, they stopped cutting, they stopped practicing like they wanted to be there. Boyle told the media that the fact his team was even competitive their last time out was “mind-boggling.”

Now, to be frank, the Colorado Buffaloes are a bad basketball team. Maybe the Buffs needed people to believe that to regain the chip.

By most accounts, the chip appears to be coming back.

The process started Monday when Boyle made his team sit through hours of the team’s lowlights to show just how bad things had gotten.

“First we’ve gotta recognize our mistakes,” senior forward Lucas Siewert said. “We were turning the ball over a lot, making rookie mistakes on defense that we normally don’t make. That carried on for three games and that was the problem.”

And then, the next day, they hit the practice court.

“It was one of the most intense (practices) we’ve had in a while,” Siewert said. “We needed to do something different.”

Hopefully the first good practices in weeks are enough to spark the Buffs, because the margin for error is all but gone.

If Colorado beats Utah in Salt Lake City on Saturday afternoon, they’ll have a bye through the first round of the Pac-12 tournament. They’ll also have the best regular-season record in program history.

If Colorado loses, its path through the tournament will likely be longer.

The Utah game may not be a true must-win contest, but it’s pretty close. They bye is very important, but getting back into a rhythm is crucial.

Luckily, Siewert seems to have his own special chip on his shoulder, too.

“We didn’t get the win on my senior night,” Siewert said. “It’s their senior night and we’re just trying to go out there and get a win.”

And after Utah, it’s on to Vegas.

“My freshman year we played one game, my sophomore year we played two games, my junior year we played three games,” Siewert said. “It’s one game at a time.”

Win the third game this time around and the Buffs will bring the T-Mobile Arena nets with them back to Boulder…

…well, as long as they handle business against Utah.