CORVALLIS, Ore. — More often than not, Tad Boyle’s teams at the University of Colorado have improved as seasons have progressed.
This year’s group is regressing. In swift and dramatic fashion.
The latest low point in a season that has been full of them arrived late Saturday night, as the Buffaloes dropped a 60-52 decision at Oregon State. The Beavers had lost seven of their previous eight games, yet CU produced a season-low scoring total against a club that had been surrendering 68.4 points per game in Pac-12 Conference play.
The defeat left the Buffs with a middling 3-4 record against the other five teams joining them in the bottom half of the league standings. CU will have a chance to improve that mark this week at home against the Bay Area teams, beginning Thursday against California (8 p.m., Pac-12 Network). Beyond that, however, any chance of making an unlikely late season push will require results against teams vying for the conference championship.
“You just have to get back to the basics,” Boyle said. “What are we doing at practice to get better? What are we doing in preparation with our scouting reports to get better? That’s what we have to concentrate on. We have to improve, and right now we’ve (regressed). That’s the head coach. That’s nobody else. It’s not the assistant coaches. It’s not the players. The head coach isn’t getting it done with this team.”
Last year, the Buffs stood at 5-7 in the conference before winning eight of the next nine games, including wins in four consecutive road games. In the second year of the McKinley Wright IV-led recruiting class in 2018-19, the Buffs started 2-6 in the Pac-12 and put together a three-game run at the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii even more frustrating than this year’s 1-2 showing at the Myrtle Beach Invitational. Yet that group rallied with a 12-3 run, ultimately reaching the Pac-12 semifinals and the NIT quarterfinals.
Even the 2016-17 squad, the Derrick White-led club that arguably was the most disappointing team in Boyle’s 13 seasons at CU, overcame an 0-7 start in league play to go 8-3 through the remainder of the regular season.
“That comes from the players. Us. There’s nobody else we can really look to,” CU forward J’Vonne Hadley said. “We’re the only ones on the court. We’ve got to take ownership. We’ve got to take care of the ball, decision-making, a lot of that stuff. We’ve got to look to ourselves and figure out individually what we can do to work on getting better. We’re all in this together and there’s still a long ways to go.”
The Buffs’ offensive struggles were on display once again at OSU. CU actually was shooting well early in the game, but the effectiveness of that attack was limited by 10 first-half turnovers. Tristan da Silva enjoyed a big night with his second double-double (22 points, 15 rebounds), and Hadley went 5-for-5 with 11 points. Yet as has been the case all season, the support behind a pair of double-digit scorers was nonexistent, with the remainder of the team managing just 19 points while shooting 7-for-34 (.206).
For what it’s worth for Buffs fans, Boyle repeatedly put the blame for his team’s run of five losses in six games upon his own shoulders. Whether that self-reflection results in finally finding the right buttons to push with the struggling Buffs will be the challenge of February.
“Right now our offense, I told the team, on a scale of one to 10, we’re about a two in terms of the way we take care of the ball,” Boyle said. “It’s the same stuff. And there’s only one person to blame, and that’s the head coach.”
