BOULDER, Colo.—The Colorado Buffaloes sport one of the youngest and most inexperienced rosters in the nation with 10 freshmen and sophomores.
These recruits fit second-year coach Jeff Bzdelik’s scheme, but … “You can’t accelerate experience,” cautioned Bzdelik, who has just one junior and one senior on scholarship.
“We’re exactly where we want to be at this stage of the rebuilding process. If you recall when I first became the head basketball coach here I said ‘I can’t wave a magic wand and have this thing turn around over night,'” said Bzdelik, who went 12-20 in his first season in Boulder.
The Buffs were more competitive than their record suggested, with half of their losses close calls that could have gone either way.
Bzdelik doesn’t even know what his own expectations are, however.
“We have a bunch of young players, and how those players are going to react when the lights are turned on against great competition we’ll find out together,” Bzdelik said. “But I feel great about the future. Last year we spent a lot of time with our goal of creating the culture we wanted and we accomplished that. They played competitively; they got better, they improved in a lot of areas, we had an excellent recruiting class, the start of this year’s recruiting class are good, they’re very, very good.
“So all the things are positive, we just are going to be extremely young and very inexperienced but I feel we’re right on target.”
Leading the Buffs’ freshman class are Australian point guard Nate Tomlinson and guard Ryan Kelly. And there’s a trio of newcomers expected to give Colorado a presence in the paint: Austin Dufault, 6-8, 210, Toby Veal, 6-7, 225, and Trey Eckloff, 6-9, 225.
Sophomores include forward Cory Higgins, who logged 1,074 minutes last year, the sixth-most in school history, guard Levi Knutson and forward Casey Crawford, who sat out last season after transferring from Wake Forest.
Junior guard Dwight Thorne II and senior forward Jermyl Jackson-Wilson are last remaining holdovers from coach Ricardo Patton’s teams.
The Buffs were once again picked last in the Big 12 coaches poll.
“We can’t control what other people are saying about us; people say we’re young. What matters is what we are doing in the locker room, what we’re doing in practice to make each other better,” Knutson said. “I think we can surprise a lot of people.”
The Buffs will sorely miss the leadership of forward Richard Roby and guard Marcus Hall and their 31-point combined scoring average.
“I think we are going to have better balance, we’re going to be able to shoot the ball from all positions,” Bzdelik said. “That balance will create better efficiency offensively and also allow us to score just as much with the loss of Richard and Marcus.”
The Buffs will rely heavily on Higgins, who averaged 8.3 points a game as a freshman.
“Cory has really improved, he’s built up his body, he’s improved his skill. Cory spent a great portion of his summer with the Charlotte Bobcats and I remember going to the pre-draft camp to watch Richard Roby and at the pre-draft camp was Michael Jordan, Rod Higgins and Cory,” Bzdelik said.
“To have the opportunity that Cory had to hang with Michael, and to be in the gym with him on a daily basis coupled with Cory’s drive to be the best player he wants to be, he has improved a lot.”
The college 3-point line has been moved back by a foot to 20 feet, 9 inches, farther than the international line but inside the NBA’s, and Bzdelik said he has a team that can flourish from the new arc.
“One of the goals in recruiting is really to put together the best shooting team in the country, I mean that is really our goal. If you can’t shoot the ball we’re not going to recruit you, and I think we’ve accomplished that,” he said. “We’ll see, I’ll say that and we might have clang-bang, who knows?”
A roster packed with youth isn’t the nightmare some might expect, Bzdelik insisted.
“These young players, what is refreshing about them is they want to be coached,” he said. “They want to do the right thing, they are very innocent, you can mold them the way you want to mold them, they are eager, they want to please and they want to play so bad and they want to do it together.”
Bzdelik, who has coached in the me-first world of the NBA, loves having so many baby-faced pupils eager to listen and learn.
“There is no agenda other than to just play hard, play well and play together and win. No one is giving them a chance to do that because we’re so young and we lost so many scorers and seniors,” Bzdelik said. “To me, I am really excited about this year.”
So is Crawford.
“We’re a young team but our potential is amazing,” he said. “We’re deep. We’re a lot deeper than we were last year. It’s just all about the young guys picking up the offense. We’re a young team. There are going to be some bumps in the road, but I think we’re going to win some big games and surprise some people.”
