In these volatile economic times the Colorado athletic department is hoping to get more fans invested in the men’s basketball program.

Tickets for tonight’s season opener against Arkansas-Pine Bluff can be had for as little as $1. Those who participate in the promotion also receive a free T-shirt, which grants them free admission to eight more non-conference home games.

And tonight’s tip time has been moved back to 8:34 p.m. so football fans planning on attending the pep rally on Pearl Street won’t have an excuse not to make their way up to the Coors Events Center.

It will be Jeff Bzdelik’s job to make sure everyone gets enough bang for their entertainment buck.

CU’s second-year head coach is now working with a roster made up mostly of players that he recruited, and the Charmin-soft non-conference schedule is designed to allow the young team to gain some confidence while winning games before the Big 12 grind begins.

So, how good are the 2008-09 Buffs?

“We’ll find out together,” Bzdelik said. “Plain and simple.”

In addition to the cheap tickets, those who attend tonight’s game might want to splurge on a program.

Bzdelik has only has three players — sophomore guard Cory Higgins, senior forward Jermyl Jackson-Wilson and junior guard Dwight Thorne — who have ever played in a game at CU before.

The Buffs are counting on a couple of freshmen, starting point guard Nate Tomlinson and starting forward Austin Dufault, to be impact players right away. Sophomore Casey Crawford, who sat out last season after transferring from Wake Forest, is expected to vastly improve the offense by consistently knocking down 3-pointers.

Toby Veal, perhaps the most talented member of the five-man all-freshmen recruiting class, needs to be a strong rebounder on a team that still lacks size. Levi Knutson, a sophomore who played through a serious hip injury last season, has to be able to come off the bench and make more shots this season.

“I’m anxious to see how they do under the bright lights,” Jackson-Wilson, the only senior in the program, said of the new cast of talented but untested characters. “Some people play differently, some play better, you never know what’s going to happen. I’m pretty confident in our team, though, with the chemistry we have and how well we’ve been practicing.”

Instead of beating up on a couple of Division II programs in meaningless exhibition games witnessed by 10,000 empty seats, Bzdelik scheduled closed-door scrimmages against Utah and Northern Colorado — two experienced but stylistically different opponents.

“Utah is a senior-dominated team. They’re very big and physical, so for the younger guys it was very good just to see what type of physicality there is in Division I basketball,” Dufault said. “Northern Colorado was another older team and it was good to travel to Greeley and play them there.”

The Buffs will play a school-record eight home games before Christmas. The early part of the schedule is more about how CU plays than what the opponents do, although Bzdelik admits he really doesn’t know exactly what to expect from an Arkansas-Pine Bluff team with a new head coach and eight new players.

“Basketball is an unpredictable game, but I think the way we’ve been progressing in practice, hopefully there won’t be any surprises (tonight),” Knutson said. “I think we know what we’re going to get out of each other and we’re used to each other on the court.”

CU was 12-20 during Bzdelik’s first season in Boulder and has been picked to finish last in the Big 12 again by his peers, mostly due to the losses of Richard Roby and Marcus Hall. There will be some growing pains with such an inexperienced lineup, but the coaching staff believes this year’s team will be much more balanced on offense and committed on defense.

“We’re going to make some mistakes, as any young team is going to do,” Thorne said. “But I think we’ll work hard to overcome those mistakes by playing hard, being more aware, listening to coach, trying to be coachable, and doing the right things at all times. ...

“Having such a young team makes it a lot more exciting because you don’t know how everybody is going to react when the lights come on.”