SAN FRANCISCO — Arizona State basketball coach Herb Sendek was rather blunt in his opinion of preseason polls Thursday at Pac-12 media day.
“(After Arizona), you could probably put everybody in a hat, shake it up and have just as good a chance at predicting the order of finish as we are able to do sitting here today,” Sendek said. “How anybody, short of Nostradamus, could sit here today and predict like there really is a difference between ninth and 10th or eighth and ninth just is unreasonable.”
Very few coaches put much stock in the preseason rankings and polls, and Colorado’s Tad Boyle is no different. Boyle did admit, however, that it’s a bit flattering to be picked to do well, and his Buffs were slotted third — behind Arizona and Utah — in a poll of Pac-12 media.
“It makes you feel good that there is some respect about your program and players and what you have coming back,” Boyle said.
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Colorado has had to earn that respect over the years. Boyle said he remembers the Buffs’ first season in the Pac-12, 2011-12, when they were picked 10th — tied with Washington State — in the preseason poll.
“I’ll never forget that,” Boyle said. “We used that as motivation.”
That season, Boyle and the Buffs won the Pac-12 Tournament title. They’ve been picked in the upper half of the conference the past three years. Both last year and this year, the Buffs were third, just one point away from second both times.
Clearly, the Buffs have gained respect for their success.
“We know they’re a great team,” Stanford senior Chasson Randle said. “They provide some toughness, some grit about them, and they get it done on both ends of the floor. They play well together.”
After going 23-12 a year ago and reaching the NCAA Tournament for the third year in a row, the Buffs return 88.4 percent of their point production (first in the league), 94.1 percent of their rebounds (first), 87 percent of their steals (first), 95.7 percent of their blocks (first) and 82.9 percent of their assists (second).
“They’re just so balanced,” Washington’s Nigel Williams-Goss said. “When you have a guard like Askia (Booker), you have a wing like Xavier (Johnson) and you have a post like Josh Scott, they’re pretty balanced on all three levels. You have a lot of weapons you have to worry about at all times.”
Boyle agrees.
He’s got a roster filled with talented players, led by the trio mentioned by Williams-Goss.
“What I love about our team is we have good versatility,” Boyle said. “We have a lot of guys that can guard a lot of positions, play multiple positions. We have good basketball players that have good basketball instincts.”
The Buffs did lose a key leader in Spencer Dinwiddie, who declared for the NBA draft after his junior season.
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