The Colorado men’s basketball team still plans to renew a longstanding state rivalry on Tuesday night. It just won’t be against Colorado State.
Instead, coach Tad Boyle’s program announced on Friday morning the Buffs will play Division II Colorado Mines, currently ranked 13th in the NABC Division II top 25 poll. Additionally, the postponed Pac-12 Conference opener that was supposed to happen Wednesday night at Arizona instead will be played Dec. 28 in Tucson.
This will be the 70th meeting between the Buffs and Orediggers, though it will be the first since Nov. 29, 1978. CU has frequently hosted Mines for exhibition games, most recently in 2018. As was the plan for the CSU game, tipoff will remain at 6 p.m. and air on Pac-12 Networks. The game will be considered an exhibition contest for Mines.
The Buffs plan to be back in action on Saturday in their Pac-12 Conference opener against Washington State on Saturday afternoon at the CU Events Center. The game appeared in jeopardy earlier this week when the CU program enacted a shutdown due to widening COVID-19 issues, but the Buffs resumed workouts on Thursday after a two-day pause. That pause forced the cancellation of the planned league opener Wednesday at Arizona.
The tipoff time and television info for the Dec. 28 Arizona date will be determined later.
Rescheduling the Arizona game to Dec. 28 tentatively gives the Buffs three Pac-12 road games in a span of seven days, including the Dec. 31 date at USC and a Jan. 2 tilt at UCLA, but given the expanding shutdowns in Los Angeles, the fate of those games remains unclear.
