Tristan da Silva collected one final accolade for an individual effort that was a clear bright spot for the Colorado Buffaloes.
The CU men’s basketball team put its eventful 2022-23 season to rest on Wednesday night with the team’s annual year-end awards banquet. Da Silva led the way by landing the Chauncey Billups MVP Award, one of five honors decided by a team vote.
After a run of four consecutive team MVP honors won by former point guard McKinley Wright IV, The Billups Award has been won by different players in consecutive years, as da Silva follows 2020 recruiting classmate Jabari Walker’s honor last year.
Da Silva earned first team All-Pac-12 honors after averaging 15.9 points and 4.9 rebounds, playing in all 35 games for the Buffs with 33 starts. Da Silva shot .496 from the floor and was an 0-for-4 game from long range in the finale against Utah Valley away from finishing with a top-10 single-season 3-point mark in program history, ultimately finishing at .394. After struggling at the free throw line early in the season — da Silva owned a .667 mark (18-for-27) through the season’s first 10 games — he finished with a .755 free throw percentage.
Da Silva posted 11 20-point games, the most by any CU player since Derrick White recorded 15 in 2016-17. He became the first player since George King early in the 2017-18 season to record consecutive 25-point games when he backed up a 25-point game against Northern Alabama with 26 points against Northern Colorado. During a run from late January through early February, da Silva became the first CU player since Josh Scott over eight years earlier to record at least 20 points in five consecutive games.
Da Silva recorded the first double-double of his career on Dec. 21 with 20 points and 10 rebounds against Southern Utah and added another on Jan. 28 at Oregon State (22 points, 15 rebounds). Da Silva went 11-for-17 with a career-high 30 points in a home win against Oregon on Jan. 5.
Jalen Gabbidon, the graduate transfer from Yale, collected two of the other awards voted on by the team, winning the Best Defender honor and the Most Inspirational Player award. That latter honor had been won by Evan Battey in each of the four previous seasons.
CU’s other Ivy League graduate transfer, former Princeton standout Ethan Wright, won the Tebo Family PASS Award, which recognizes “the player or players that best exemplified the virtues of Perseverance, Attitude, Selflessness and Success.”
Luke O’Brien was voted the team’s Most Improved Player and also collected the Stephen Pelle Rebounding award as CU’s top rebounder. Junior college transfer J’Vonne Hadley officially ended with the top rebounding average on the team at 5.9, but his season was cut short at 22 games due to an injury. O’Brien averaged 5.6 rebounds while playing 33 games, and he was particularly strong down the stretch, averaging 8.3 over the final nine games.
For the second consecutive year, sophomore guard KJ Simpson won the McKinley Wright IV Assists Award as the Buffs’ leader in assists. Simpson averaged 2.7 assists as a freshman and increased that mark to 3.8 this season.
Colorado finished 18-17 and 8-12 in the Pac-12 before suffering a season-ending loss against Utah Valley in the second round of the NIT.
