Bzdelik’s Buffs may be in for another rough season
By ARNIE STAPLETON
AP Sports Writer
The Associated Press
BOULDER, Colo.
Jeff Bzdelik can’t seem to catch a break—or maybe he’s just gathering too many of the bad variety.
The Colorado basketball coach lost his prized recruit, athletic freshman guard Shannon Sharpe, to a season-ending knee injury during preseason workouts.
Sharpe, a tenacious defender who was expected to split point guard duties with Nate Tomlinson, injured his left knee last month, requiring a microfracture procedure that will sideline him for the entire season and maybe longer.
The 6-foot-1 guard from Corona, Calif., averaged 17.9 points, 7.9 boards, 7.7 assists and 3.2 steals in his senior season at Centennial High School in 2007-08 before spending last season at a prep school in North Carolina, where he didn’t play ball.
“Shannon’s injury has been difficult for all of us to deal with because our strong feelings for him as a terrific young man and for what he would have meant to our effectiveness as a team for this season,” Bzdelik said. “However, he will come back even stronger for next season and that bodes well for our future. It is now up to others to contribute more, and I strongly believe in my players to rise to the occasion.”
It seems the Buffs are always talking about next year.
Bzdelik is entering his third season with the Buffs, who open Nov. 13 against Arkansas-Pine Buff and are again expected to be the cellar dweller in a stacked Big 12. The team has only one senior, guard Dwight Thorne III.
Bzdelik is 21-42 at Colorado, including 4-28 in conference play, since supplanting Ricardo Patton after a successful stint at Air Force.
“A couple years ago when I took this job, I said very clearly that we couldn’t wave a magic wand and have this happen overnight,” Bzdelik said. “Coach Patton did a wonderful job when he was here. I think the last year or two, he probably lost his spirit a little bit.
“Things just unraveled in a way from a GPA standpoint, from a citizenship standpoint and from a competitive spirit standpoint that put us in the state we were in.”
He said last year’s team with just one senior and one junior wasn’t deep enough.
“We weren’t strong enough and we weren’t mature enough to close out games,” Bzdelik said. “The competitive spirit was awesome. We lost 11 games by an average of 4 1/2 points per game. They never wavered with their commitment on and off the court in terms of pursuit of excellence.”
As an example of that, Bzdelik pointed out that the team set a record for the best GPA in Colorado men’s basketball history.
“Our citizenship is awesome,” he said. “As we approach this year, I feel we’re poking our head out on to the horizon out of this deep hole that we had dug ourselves into.”
