Brooks: Buffs Hope Relphorde Can Provide 'Wow' Factor

BOULDER - For Cory Higgins, the "wow" factor was in-his-face immediate. And it must have been pretty close to that the first time or two Jeff Bzdelik watched Marcus Relphorde do his thing - make that things, plural - on the basketball court.

Said Higgins, whose rep as Colorado's most versatile men's hoopster now might have a serious challenger: "It was like 'wow' . . . he's going to definitely help us. He walked in and the first time we played against each other, I knew definitely he was going to start."

Not so fast with that, cautioned Bzdelik, predictably slipping into coach mode Friday at his team's media day interview session. Asked to tap five starters if forced to Friday, the day practice opened, Bzdelik politely declined.

But you got the feeling, a very strong one, that Relphorde - as Higgins predicted - will be one of the five. In fact, when Bzdelik thumbed down his list of Buffaloes newcomers, he led off with the 6-foot-7 Relphorde and called him "the one I expect the most out of."

Meantime, Relphorde was seated in the back of the room, soaking in the high expectations. And he was fine with it.

"It's not really putting me on the spot," he said, grinning. "A lot of the things he said up there, he's told me (privately). I know he has high expectations for me, and I welcome that. I mean, I feel like setting the bar high is good, because I have high expectations for myself as well."

Versatility is Relphorde's calling card, with an understanding of the game and a passion to play it also featured in bold print. This scouting report comes from Higgins, CU's top returning player (he was first or second on the team last season in five major statistical categories):

"He's 6-7, physical, can guard other teams' four man, but the fours definitely can't guard him. The threes, the two guards will be too small to handle him . . . he's just going to create a lot of matchup problems. He can do just about everything."

"I wouldn't say there's one thing I'm known for that's my specialty, but there's a lot of things I do well that cause matchup problems," said Relphorde, who spent one season at Saint Louis, transferred to Indian Hills (Iowa) Community College, then settled on CU rather than Kansas State.

"At my size," Relphorde continued, "I'm pretty skilled; I can handle the ball, so if there's a bigger guy on me I'll be tough to defend and if there's smaller guy on me I can post him up. So, it's a matchup problem either way."

He's the kind of player Bzdelik covets to lead the transformation of the Buffs, 20-game losers in back-to-back seasons and cellar residents in the Big 12 Conference. CU was 12-20 overall (3-13 Big 12)in Bzdelik's first season and 9-22 (1-15) in Year 2.

But with the infusion of Relphorde and touted freshmen Alec Burks, Shane Harris-Tunks, Shannon Sharpe and Keegan Hornbuckle, Bzdelik and the Buffs could be on the way to digging themselves out.

"My vision is to build this program with a strong foundation of young players, collectively molding them as solid players as a basketball team, that when they are juniors and seniors they can be mature, deep enough and strong enough to have success in this league," Bzdelik said.

"The culture is in place. We still have only one senior. As we approach this year, I feel we're poking our head out onto the horizon, out of this deep hole that we had dug ourselves into."

What he wants from his third CU team isn't so complex: snagging critical rebounds (he terms that "a will and a want to") and an overall toughness (not punching out an opponent, but "executing under duress"). Those ingredients were conspicuously absent last season for the Buffs, who were greener than the majority of their opponents and still are young this time around.

Relphorde, who averaged 10.6 points and 4.2 rebounds a game last season at Indian Hills (30-3), believes he can make a seamless transition to play at the Big 12 level.

"Yeah, most definitely," he said. "I always knew I could play on this level. And just coming out here, getting to work with the guys, I felt like I fit in pretty well. And there were definitely some things I could bring to the table."

When Relphorde, a native Chicagoan, arrived in June (he took two classes to get acclimated academically), he said he sensed a collective hunger for improvement among his teammates.

"That's one thing we talk about a lot . . . all the guys from last year, (say) it's just time for this program to step up," he said. "Just looking at how a lot of the athletics this year may be struggling a little bit, the ones that normally are up, we feel like this is the perfect time for CU basketball to kind of pick it up and give fans something they can come out to and watch a win and get this school back on the map - especially in basketball."

No one at CU, especially his head coach, has any objections to that.

Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU