Boyle Says 'Clock Ticking' As Buffs Head To Air Force
December 19, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Neill Woelk
AIR FORCE ACADEMY — Colorado basketball coach Tad Boyle knows time is running short for his Buffaloes to corner the consistency that has evaded them thus far this season.
Boyle's Buffs have just two games remaining — tonight's 7 p.m. tilt at Air Force and Thursday's 6:30 p.m. home game with Eastern Washington — before their Pac-12 schedule begins. If the Buffs haven't discovered a cure for their roller coaster ways by then, Boyle has warned, the Buffs could be in for a long conference season.
""I feel the clock ticking," Boyle said after Saturday's 81-71 win over Fort Hays State. "Right now, the way our team is playing, we're a below-average basketball team, at least to the standards that I feel like Colorado basketball has risen to over the past few years. We've got the capability of being as good as we want to be and beating anybody in the league. But it's got to be every night, here we go, strap it on."
Thus far this year, the 8-3 Buffs haven't been an every-night team. In fact, they haven't been an every-half team, as evidenced by Saturday's win over Fort Hays. In that game, the Buffs built a 16-point lead early in the first half, extended it to 21 early in the second and then went into cruise control, allowing the Division II Tigers to close the gap to single digits twice in the second half, including with less than three minutes to go.
"We don't have the mental toughness to put anybody away," Boyle said simply. "We don't have the mental toughness to play two halves back to back. That's obvious. We better either figure it out or it's going to be an up and down year."
Not that the Buffs haven't played well at times. They are the only Pac-12 team with two wins over ranked teams, a November win over then-No. 22 Texas and a mid-December win over then-No. 13 Xavier. But the Buffs have also have absorbed what Boyle has called the "most disappointing loss" in his tenure in Boulder, a late-November home loss to Colorado State, as well as some less-than-impressive outings against lower-tier teams.
Individually, it's been much the same story.
The Buffs have had outstanding individual performances, ranging from junior George King's four double-doubles to Derrick White's Pac-12 Player of the Week effort to Xavier Johnson's seventh career double-double and a 23-point effort against Notre Dame.
But they have also had games in some of those players have struggled, and the result has been three losses — more than Boyle and his staff likely imagined the Buffs owning at this point in the season.
"We know this team is capable," Boyle said. "We know they can do it in spurts. We've shown that against Xavier, we've shown it against Notre Dame, we showed it against BYU at times. High level teams on the road, at home, we've shown we can be as good as we want to be. But we've also shown that we can't sustain it. That's the challenge for this team."
When the season began, the general consensus was this would be a team with plenty of firepower and a multitude of weapons. But already there have been nights when none of those weapons were finding the mark.
Usually, those would be games in which the Buffs would lean on their rebounding and defense to make a difference. But even their rebounding — a consistent strength early in the season — seems to have also gone AWOL. After winning the rebound battle in seven of their first eight games, the Buffs have been outrebounded in two of their last three contests. Even though they had a four-rebound edge over Fort Hays, that was little consolation for Boyle, considering the Buffs had a superior height and size advantage at virtually every position.
"We've become a below-average rebounding team in the span of about a week and a half," Boyle said.
Still, with an 8-3 record and two very winnable games on the immediate horizon before the beginning of Pac-12 play, the Buffs do have time — albeit a short amount — to discover the missing link.
Boyle would love to see it happen Monday night against Air Force. The 6-5 Falcons are a typical Falcons team: balanced scoring (four players averaging double figures) and disciplined on both ends of the court. Their last game was a 77-65 loss to Denver, coached by former CU assistant coach Rodney Billups, on Dec. 10.
"The thing about Air Force is they're disciplined and they're tough," Boyle said. "When this Colorado basketball team plays against teams that are disciplined, that are tough, we struggle. We better strap it on."
BROADCAST: Monday's game will be televised by the CBS Sports Network with Jason Horowitz and Bob Wenzel. DenverSports 760 AM will broadcast the game with Mark Johnson and Scott Wilke.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
