Boulder – How to fix everything that’s broken with the Colorado basketball program? Beats me. But I do know where the next coach of the Buffaloes must begin.
The hoop dreams, the ego and the reputation of junior guard Richard Roby have been shattered in a 1,000 jagged pieces.
Until Roby is put back together, CU will not win.
“I feel like I deserve all the help I can get from a new coach. I’ve been through everything in this program and endured my share of bumps in the road,” Roby said Saturday after the Buffs beat Nebraska 73-69 in their regular-season finale.
Athletic director Mike Bohn can produce a 10-point plan to resurrect CU hoops from the dead and write a list of coaching candidates as long as his arm, but none of it will matter unless Roby can rediscover the massive potential that somehow got lost under the fallout from Ricardo Patton’s decision to make this year his final one on the team bench.
If the mission of any university is to teach, then CU has failed Roby, and failed him miserably. The likable 6-foot-6 guard has received far too many lessons in the school of hard knocks and not been given the necessary preparation to cash in on his million-dollar NBA potential.
“I could have easily given up. After scoring one point at Nebraska (in January), I could have gotten down on myself. But I think it was good to go through this season, because it showed me I have a long way to go,” Roby said.
Whether Bohn hires Jeff Bzdelik from Air Force, Nuggets assistant Mike Dunlap or the hot coach du jour from a rising power such as Old Dominion or Virginia Commonwealth, the key to the first-year success of the new man won’t be chartered flights to away games. It will be restoring the shooting touch and confidence in Roby that had NBA scouts suggesting he could have been a first-round choice in 2006.
After a stormy season of personal regression, Roby has no other realistic economic choice except to return to CU for his senior campaign, and climb from the same black hole of pessimism that swallowed his fellow Buffaloes.
“At times, it crossed my mind that I made a bad decision coming back to school rather than turning pro, and that now I might not have the opportunity to play at the next level,” admitted Roby, who averaged more than 17 points and five rebounds for the Buffs.
“But those doubts are gone.”
Patton forever will be a disciple of tough love. After his final home game at the school where he worked hard for 14 years, the coach grabbed a microphone and reminded the sparse crowd of 3,506 not to wait until it’s time for goodbye to say hello.
Patton dragged listeners through an uncomfortably sad anecdote of how his poor excuse for a father will probably show up at the funeral when it’s time to bury the coach’s 96-year-old grandmother and try to make amends.
“When I made a decision to step down before the season, it was about the players,” Patton said. “It wasn’t about me.”
But, too often, it seemed like a wasted year in the lives of everyone associated with CU basketball.
At the final buzzer a 23-point performance in which Roby reminded why pro scouts began following him in the first place, he ran with a spring in his sneakers to the middle of the court, pumping his fist. He demonstrated the pure joy for a sport that sometimes, while watching Roby go through the motions during a 19-loss season, you worried was gone forever from his heart.
“I was mentally gone at one point,” Roby said. “I’ve been at the lowest ebb of my career, and now I know what to do not to go back there.”
Despite two trips to the NCAA Tournament and three seasons of 20 victories, Patton never seemed to grasp at Colorado that tough love can turn boys to men, but without joy, basketball becomes a chore rather than a game. And who wants to pay to watch that?
So we will not remember this as a day of goodbyes. Say hello to a new era in which hope and dreams are not only permitted, but encouraged.
To fix what’s wrong with the run-down CU basketball program, painting a fresh smile on Roby’s face would be as good a place as any to start.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
