Woelk: Win At UCLA A Big Step For Boyle's Buffs

BOULDER — One year after one of the more frustrating seasons in his head coaching career, a rejuvenated Colorado head coach Tad Boyle is putting forth one of his best coaching efforts yet.

Youth — more accurately the presence of such — can have such an effect.

Not to say this Colorado team will be Boyle's best. That designation will almost certainly still belong to either of Boyle's first two CU teams: the 2010-2011 crew that was snubbed by the NCAA and then advanced to the NIT Final Four; or the 2011-12 team that won four Pac-12 tourney games in four days, then beat UNLV in the NCAA Tournament opener.

But what these current Buffs are accomplishing in the face of youth, some key roster hits and some early season bumps is nothing short of outstanding — and Boyle deserves plenty of credit for guiding this bunch to this point.

These Buffs were not a team predicted to have any impact on the Pac-12 standings. The preseason media poll picked Colorado to finish ninth in the conference — and that is before news broke that freshman Evan Battey would be ineligible for the season, and before senior big man Tory Miller-Stewart suffered a season-ending foot injury.

But three weeks into the conference season, Colorado has already had a significant impact on the league standings. The 11-7 Buffs are 3-3 in conference play, with a win over one of the current co-leaders (Arizona), a win over last week's highest-ranked conference team (Arizona State) — and perhaps most impressively, a road win over the conference's league leader heading into the weekend (UCLA).

All that with a starting lineup that has included more freshmen than upperclassmen.

Boyle, now in his eighth season in Boulder, is never one to even mildly criticize a team from past years. But there's no doubt that last year's team — one that featured four fifth-year seniors — provided him with one of his more trying seasons. It was a squad that never quite found the right chemistry, despite the presence of an NBA first-round draft pick, and ended up falling short of some rather lofty preseason expectations.

This year, however, it is clear that the infusion of youth has reinvigorated Boyle, and as a result, the entire program.

Rarely has a week gone by since the season began that Boyle has not mentioned how much he enjoys coaching this team — and it's no wonder. Led by freshman point guard McKinley Wright IV, the newcomers have brought a high measure of energy and enthusiasm to practices and games. It has been infectious, and the result has been some quality performances.

Of course, along with that energy, the vagaries of youth also bring inconsistency, and this team has no doubt displayed its share in that regard. Along with some outstanding efforts against elite teams, the Buffs have also turned in some clunkers — the kinds of games that could haunt them in a big way when postseason discussions get serious.

It is one reason Saturday's win over UCLA might be one of the biggest of the Boyle era, even though it did not come against a ranked team.

The last seven years have no doubt produced some highlight-reel moments for a program that has not been particularly rich in hoops tradition. There was the aforementioned inaugural season under Boyle, one that produced back-to-back wins over No. 9 Missouri and No. 21 Kansas State, a win over No. 5 Texas, and the run to the NIT Final Four. A year later, there was the four-game run to the Pac-12 tourney title that included a win over Arizona in the championship game, followed by the NCAA tourney win over UNLV.

And, of course, there is the 2013 buzzer-beating home win over Kansas, as well as home wins over top-10 Arizona and Oregon squads.

Saturday's win at UCLA has none of the surface glamour of those victories. But its importance can't be overstated.

For starters, it ended an 0-8 skid on the Bruins' home floor. As Boyle said afterward, "We'd never won at Pauley Pavilion … and never's a long time."

The win also gave the Buffs their first road victory of the year, ending a five-game skid, and it came against one of the hottest teams in the conference. UCLA entered the game with six wins in its last seven games, and the Bruins had also won 27 of their previous 29 homes games — with their only losses to Arizona and Cincinnati.

But perhaps most importantly, Saturday's win brought to the surface two key points:

1. The Buffs can win without a superb game from freshman Wright. Up to this point, the Buffs' fortunes had hinged on Wright's performance. If he played well, they had a chance to win. If not, the Buffs' chances dimmed considerably.

But Saturday, Wright was not the centerpiece of the victory. While he did have a game-high seven assists, it was clear that UCLA was intent upon making CU's leading scorer a non-factor in that regard. The Bruins succeeded — holding Wright to just four points on 1-for-8 shooting — but senior George King more than filled the gap, finishing with a game-high 26 points and 10 rebounds.

Simply, the Buffs had someone step up when Wright was not at his best, a nice indicator for the future.

2. The Buffs showed some toughness on the road in crunch time. This has not been an area where the Buffs have been particularly effective in recent years. Rather, they have shown a tendency to let leads slip away on the road, a shortcoming that has proven costly more than once.

But Saturday, against the Pac-12's highest scoring team in conference play, Colorado repelled three UCLA charges in the second half to produce the win. They played tough defense throughout, grabbed big rebounds when most necessary, and made big shots when the situation required such a response.

In short, they played like a veteran team, and that's a credit to Boyle. CU's head coach has adapted to his team's strengths and weaknesses — witness his willingness to play zone defense on a regular basis — and it has produced three big wins in the last four games.

As mentioned, this is a team that has started three freshmen throughout Pac-12 play. But it is also a team that is growing up on a weekly basis. Along with Wright, freshmen Tyler Bey, D'Shawn Schwartz, Lazar Nikolic and Dallas Walton continue to become bigger contributors. Meanwhile, upperclassmen King, Dominique Collier and Namon Wright are becoming more and more consistent.

The result is a team that is exciting to watch, a team that is highly competitive when it plays with its full complement of energy — and one that will also no doubt provide a few more exasperating moments as Pac-12 play continues. Whether the Buffs can play themselves into the mix for an NCAA Tournament berth in March remains to be seen.

But the bottom line is Boyle appears to have retooled the Buffs. The coach who is responsible for 28 percent of the program's all-time wins against ranked teams (17 of 61) has a foundation in place with a host of talented youngsters. The long-term future is indeed bright — and the rest of this season should no doubt be fun to watch.

These Buffs are indeed growing up in a hurry. Watching that process down the stretch should be worth the price of admission.

Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu