Boulder – As Colorado’s Ricardo Patton roamed the sideline during the Buffaloes’ 76-73 loss to Wyoming in the Coors Events Center on Sunday, it hit me that I was watching the Lyndon Johnson of college basketball coaches for the 2006-07 season.
“Accordingly,” LBJ said from the Oval Office near the end of a lengthy March 1968 speech about Vietnam, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
He had nearly 10 months remaining to serve.
On Oct. 25, Patton caught athletic director Mike Bohn by surprise by saying he wouldn’t seek or accept a contract extension from CU, and that this season would be his last.
The chances of Patton being offered a new deal after this season were slim, given what widely was known to be Bohn’s determination to invigorate the program with his own signature choice as CU’s coach.
But even if it were a longshot, Patton seemed to display a lack of faith with the young core he had recruited and was preparing to put on the floor this season. What would have been wrong with them playing, in part at least, to save his job? It wouldn’t have been a distraction. It would have been motivation.
“Right now my focus is just on giving these guys all I’ve got, with my staff,” Patton said Sunday after a 76-73 loss to Wyoming in front of an announced crowd of 2,288 dropped CU to 2-3 this season.
“These guys are going to go through some growing pains, and that’s what it’s about, being a freshman.”
Everyone would have been better off if Bohn had simply told Patton to treat this year as a sabbatical and to have either assistant Paul Graham, the former head coach at Washington State, or someone else serve as interim coach this season.
The positive is that Bohn can openly formulate plans for a run at a coach capable of making the Buffaloes a legitimate Big 12 Conference power – and who will try to sell the program statewide, including to Colorado high school coaches, CU students and alumni, or anyone else with Colorado on their mailing address or in their heart.
The upside is staggering.
Certainly, this is chauvinistic, but those of us who attended CU see absolutely nothing wrong with football coach Dan Hawkins’ alleged slight of Nebraska at a midseason rally. That’s how you have to think about CU to sell it. Get difference-making prospects to Boulder. Get them to agree that once you come over that final hill, that once you see the Flatirons, that once you experience a more eclectic campus environment than you’ll get at many places, Boulder’s the place to be, just as other college cities with similar demographics – including Eugene, Ore., and Madison, Wis., and many others – can be.
It can happen in basketball. And the rest of the state can be brought along for the ride.
The strangest thing of all about this?
Patton had four freshmen – Kal Bay, Jeremy Williams, Xavier Silas and Sean Kowal – on the floor at once Sunday. Even if junior guard Richard Roby departs for the NBA after this season, the freshmen have shown enough potential in the first five games to warrant guarded optimism.
“I think we can start having Colorado be a football and a basketball school,” said Silas, the son of former NBA star James Silas. “We’re all going to be here. I think we’re going to be able to turn the basketball community around. If you win, people are going to come, and that’s what we’re going to focus on right now.”
Bay is hauntingly reminiscent of Florida-turned-NBA point guard Jason Williams.
“Part of the reason I came was to turn this program around,” Bay said. “Not that they were a cellar-dweller in the Big 12, because they were top-five last year, but to turn it into a program where every year (it is) in the top of the Big 12 and people know us, know who we are, and don’t like coming in here to play us at home. I still believe that can happen.”
So he’s not second-guessing his decision to come to CU?
“No, sir, not at all,” Bay said. “I believe everything happens for a reason.
“I believe I’m supposed to be here, to fight through this, battle through this and continue to work hard and it will all work out.”
The freshmen probably aren’t good enough to be stars, but they can be the foundation.
For the next coach.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
