BOULDER — The pauses have begun to pile up.
As he has worked daily to unpack the issues that have led to Colorado’s worst conference start in 21 years, some problems have been easier to identify than others for seventh-year men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle. And you don’t have to own Boyle’s two-plus decades of college coaching experience to see that CU has not moved the basketball crisply during its 0-5 start to Pac-12 play.
“What happens to us is the ball sticks and doesn’t move,” Boyle said. “And when it sticks, we’re easy to guard, and when it moves, we’re really hard to guard. … The ball sticking — not moving from side to side and not getting paint touches — is something that we talk about all the time, and when we have those (scoring) droughts, we aren’t doing those things.”
Take CU’s disheartening 71-68 loss to USC on Sunday, which dropped the Buffs to 10-8 overall. After Xavier Johnson made a layup with 9:07 left to tie the game at 57-57, CU went six minutes without a field goal. By the time made a layup with 3:11 left, CU’s deficit was only 64-60, but the Buffs had missed one scoring opportunity after another to get a lead.
Boyle pointed to a lack of quick ball movement as a consistent culprit, with all those extra split seconds when the ball “sticks” adding up to missed chances late in recent games.
As CU begins a road trip at Washington (8-9, 1-4) on Wednesday night, trying to put the brakes on a five-game losing streak, the Buffs know any hopes of reversing their slide rests on finding answers.
“Cutting and ball movement are two of the biggest things we have to be more consistent on,” freshman guard said. “It’s great in practice, but now practice needs to translate into games.”
Identifying the factors that have led to some of CU’s offensive inconsistency — the Buffs are eighth in the Pac-12 in scoring (74.7 points per game), ninth in field-goal percentage (43.9) and 10th in assists (13.3) — is an easier task than correcting them.
“Sometimes it’s fatigue, I think,” Boyle said. “Our guys get tired, so they catch and they hold it. We need to catch and swing it and get that thing moved, and then cut or screen. Our motion offense, after you pass the ball, you are either supposed to cut or screen. A lot of times, it’s fatigue. Usually early in the game, things are good.”
CU is clearly missing the production of Josh Scott, the 6-foot-10 forward who finished his career last season by leading the Buffs to the NCAA Tournament for the third time. The Buffs miss Scott’s 16.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game, but it was his ability to command attention and then become a playmaker in the post, propelling the inside-out attack Boyle covets by seeing the floor, that CU has struggled to replicate.
“The thing missing about Josh is his creating double teams,” Boyle said. “When he caught the ball on the post last year, he had two players on him, which made somebody open. When you’ve got a player they have to double team, it makes it easier on everybody else.”
The Buffs also are still trying to find a consistency and chemistry in a backcourt that includes three new players — freshmen Peters and and Division II transfer White. Boyle inserted Brown into the starting lineup in each of CU’s last two games in place of senior .
“We just have to continue to move the ball in practice, and hopefully it will translate to games,” Brown said. “It’s definitely something we need to work on, but I feel like we’re slowly getting there.”