CU has a few more weeks to lock down the best hoops roster money can Boyle.
The Buffs’ men’s basketball team (17-15, 7-11 Big 12) and coach Tad Boyle missed the Big Dance for a second consecutive year. And for a second spring in a row, they’ll be playing around the time of the men’s Final Four anyway.
CU in the CBC — B
This past Monday, CU again accepted a berth in the College Basketball Crown (CBC) tournament in Las Vegas.
The CBC is a made-for-TV event which will run April 1-5, concurrent with men’s Final Four weekend, and aired on FOX Sports via its network affiliates or via FS1. The eight-team field, made up entirely of either “traditional” basketball powers or Power 4 conference reps who didn’t make the NCAA Tournament, will compete for a prize pool of $500,000 in NIL money. CU could use that cash, of course, for reasons we’ll get to in a second.
Anyway, the Buffs are slated to take on old Big 12/Big Eight rival Oklahoma in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, April 1. The winner will play either Baylor or Minnesota, coached by former CSU fan favorite Niko Medved, on April 4 in the semis.
Team Grading The Week (GTW) would love to get a Boyle-Medved rematch in Sin City. And it would be doubly great for Buffs fans to see CU’s exciting young core of freshman guard Isaiah Johnson (16.9 points per game), freshman forward Alon Michaeli (6.7 points per game) and sophomore forward Sebastian Rancik (12.3 points per game) go at it together at least one more time.
Because if you’re a Buffs hoops fan, you’ve learned that, when it comes to rosters, nothing is promised. You’ve also learned that the date next month that might be of more interest for CU’s future is April 7 — the opening day of a transfer-portal period that runs through April 21.
CU in the transfer portal — TBD
According to 247Sports.com’s tracker, s. That’s roughly 35-40% of a typical roster.
Seven players left the Buffs after a frustrating 14-21 (3-17 conference) campaign in ’24-25. The site says that CU’s averaged two portal additions over the spring of ’23, ’24 and ’25.
It’s a net negative that has opened up a great opportunity for first-year players in Boulder. Although it doesn’t portend well for keeping those young guns together.
Because the price for top-flight men’s hoops talent, like the price of oil, keeps going up. Opendorse, the data platform that both helps to facilitate and analyze Name/Image/Likeness (NIL) opportunities, And it’s expensive.
Per Opendorse, the Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big East spend $7 million to $10 million, on average, to maintain their rosters. CU’s athletic budget report to the NCAA for the 2024-25 fiscal year, the most recent public data available, shows that Buffs men’s hoops recorded $11.92 million in total operating revenues last school year against another $8.6 million in reported expenses.
Which means CU was already running on some thin margins before revenue-sharing was implemented this past summer. For some of the guff Boyle has taken since the Buffs joined the Big 12, a hoops league that’s far nastier than the Pac-12 that CU left behind, it becomes more apparent by the week that the Buffs don’t need more changes on their bench. They need more money to help Boyle retain the players he’s already got.
Staub shades Shurmur — D
Martin Luther Staub, or Benedict Staub? Former Tennessee Volunteers QB Ryan Staub, who got the program’s second crack at starting during Deion Sanders’ revolving door of post-Shedeur signal-callers last fall, offered up some mixed messages about his old program recently while meeting with reporters who cover the Vols.
On Coach Prime: “Just an unbelievable person. He impacted a lot of people on that Colorado team, made good connections with a lot of those players, and especially with me.”
On how UT compares to CU: “In my three years of playing college football, I haven’t had as much coaching as I’ve had in the first month that I’ve been here (in Knoxville).”
Those Pat Shurmur jokes just continue to write themselves, don’t they?
