With the clock ticking down to the 2025-26 season opener, it has become decision time for Tad Boyle and his staff.
Boyle and the Colorado men’s basketball team tip off the 16th season under his watch Monday against Montana State at the CU Events Center (7 p.m., ESPN+).
While a number of players — including the returning quartet of players active last season in Elijah Malone, Bangot Dak, Sebastian Rancik and Felix Kossaras — are likely to fill key roles, the expanded rosters in play this season across college basketball has Boyle working with 14 scholarship players.
Obviously, the Buffs aren’t going to play 14 players on a regular basis. Point guard Barrington Hargress, a transfer from UC Riverside, is all but certain to play a key role. And Boyle has already said freshman point guard Isaiah Johnson, who has impressed throughout the summer and preseason, is going to see playing time.
After that, however, the Buffs are rich with young, bigger wings and freshmen post players who have been battling for playing time.
“This week is a week to sit down with our guys individually and talk, have honest conversations about kind of whatap transpired over the summer, over the fall, over these 20-something practices,” Boyle said. “And understand that itap a fluid situation. The college basketball season is a marathon. Itap not a sprint.
“As we get ready to play games that count, that we’re going to be judged on, that are going to be affecting our entire season, we have to make choices as coaches. And when you have 14 players on scholarship, sometimes those choices are hard and you’ve just got to be honest.”
With seven freshmen, there likely will be at least one redshirt in the mix, although Boyle declined to name names among the candidates for a development season. CU has a wealth of wings who are at least 6-foot-5 in freshmen Jalin Holland, Ian Inman and Josiah Sanders, plus second-year wing Andrew Crawford, who redshirted last year, and Denver transfer Jon Mani.
The more plausible redshirt candidates are in the frontcourt. Malone will anchor the starting center spot, and late signee Alon Michaeli will likely play a backup role. Dak and Rancik can play the four-spot and even take shifts at center, depending on matchups, leaving freshmen big men Tacko Ifaola and Leonardo Van Elswyk staring at potentially limited playing time.
“Those are conversations that will go on this week,” Boyle said of possible redshirts. “I don’t know how it will all play out. We had them do a self-evaluation exercise about two weeks ago and we had our coaches do the same thing. Itap interesting, last year’s team we had a lot of inconsistencies in terms of what players thought of themselves relative to what their teammates thought. This year, itap a little bit more in-line. I think there’s a little more self-awareness with this year’s group. Hopefully that will help us.”
Schedule shuffle
After the football kickoff for the Nov. 8 road game at West Virginia was decided with an early start at 10 a.m. MT, Colorado settled on a 2 p.m. tipoff time for that day’s home basketball game against Eastern Washington. That matchup will air on ESPN+ as previously announced.
The Big 12 also shuffled the start time and TV info for both of the Buffs’ games against Arizona State. The game at ASU on Jan. 3, originally scheduled for noon on TNT, instead will start at 3 p.m. MT and will air on ESPN2. The home date against the Sun Devils on Feb. 7 was moved to 7:30 p.m. and also will be available on ESPN2. Like the game at ASU, the home game previously was scheduled for a noon start on TNT.
Notable
The opening matchup against Montana State will be the ninth between the programs, with CU owning a 6-2 lead in the series. … It will be the second time in five seasons the Buffs have opened against the Bobcats, as CU defeated Montana State 94-90 in overtime in the 2021-22 season opener. Current Buffs assistant Evan Battey went 6-for-6 in that game with 16 points, while four current NBA players suited up for Colorado that night — Tristan da Silva (Orlando), KJ Simpson (Charlotte), Jabari Walker (Philadelphia) and Nique Clifford (Sacramento).
