Bangot Dak was born in Omaha and raised in Lincoln. Yet in a sign of just how far the heyday of the rivalry has faded into time, Dak was unaware of the longstanding football beef between Colorado and Nebraska.
He’s about to receive a crash course in Buffaloes history.
“I didn’t know there was such a rivalry between Colorado and Nebraska,” Dak said. “But I’m learning about it a lot more.”
When the Cornhuskers visit what surely will be a boisterous Folsom Field on Sept. 9, Dak squarely will be on the side of the black and gold, the final piece of the roster puzzle for the 2023-24 CU men’s basketball team.
Dak might have been a bit of an unexpected curve ball on the recruiting front. With the Buffaloes hoping to put an NCAA Tournament run together, head coach Tad Boyle and his staff didn’t land immediate help, as Dak most likely will redshirt as a true freshman. And a team thin at bigger guards after the transfer of Nique Clifford and Javon Ruffin’s season-ending injury instead stockpiled future frontcourt depth.
If Dak and Courtney Anderson redshirt next year, it will mark the third year in a row multiple true freshmen have taken redshirt years — following the injury-spurred redshirts of Ruffin and Quincy Allen in 2021-22, and RJ Smith and Joe Hurlburt last year.
“Our players loved him on the visit,” Boyle said. “The players thought he was really, really good. Talented and skills. What I saw is he’s 6-foot-10, 7-foot-plus wing span, can pass it, can shoot it. He’s missing the same thing Cody (Williams) is missing, which is physicality and strength. Thatap it. If we can get that on him, and I’ve got a lot of confidence in (strength coach) Steve Englehart, Bangotap going to be a good player.”
Dak mostly was receiving Division II and lower Division I offers out of Lincoln Southeast High School, where he led his team to the quarterfinals of Nebraska’s Class A state tournament earlier this year.
Originally, Dak intended to take a developmental year in the postgraduate college prep program at Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas. Thatap the same program that developed Bobi Klintman, briefly a CU recruit last year before admissions hurdles sent Klintman to Wake Forest for the 2022-23 season.
Since Dak was planning a developmental year anyway, the prospect of redshirting isn’t frustrating. Given the frontcourt is set to feature Eddie Lampkin Jr., Tristan da Silva and J’Vonne Hadley, plus incoming freshman Cody Williams and a strong rebounder in wing Luke O’Brien, Dak’s services are unlikely to be needed. At least this season. So the prospect of instead taking that developmental year with a high-level program looking to make a run at the NCAA Tournament made it a somewhat easy decision to begin that post-prep journey in Boulder instead.
“What really changed my mind was that colleges would be able to develop me faster and help my game a little bit quickly rather than taking a year off as a post-grad,” Dak said. “I just kind of thought about that a little more. Once I got in a strength and conditioning program with some higher-level coaching, it could bring my game to an entirely different level. That was a big factor.
“(Colorado) was really the main Division I program that recruited me really hard. It seemed like they really wanted me, and I believed what Boyle was telling me. Those are all things that went into it.”
