After losing its top three scorers from last season, Colorado entered the season faced with the looming question of how to replace that production. Who, exactly, would fill that void?
In a season-opening 82-66 victory Monday night against UC Riverside at the CU Events Center, the Buffs provided an early answer – it’s going to be a group effort.
Perhaps nothing defined Colorado’s first win of the 2022-23 season quite like the balance and depth it exhibited, the kind about which coach Tad Boyle spent much of the preseason raving.
Four players finished in double figures – J’Vonne Hadley (16 points), KJ Simpson (14), Jalen Gabbidon (12) and Tristan da Silva (12) – a potent mix of returning players and new arrivals. Ten different players saw the court for the Buffs, all of whom played at least 10 minutes. Each of those 10 players scored, all but one of whom finished with at least four points. Eight different players had at least one assist, five of whom had at least two.
“I’ve got a lot of confidence in all 10 of those guys,” Boyle said. “I've got confidence in some guys that are on the bench that aren’t playing. It's just hard to play more than 10 guys and try to get a flow going. Sometimes as a player, it's hard you know in there and not get a little bit of a rhythm going. We try to let guys play through mistakes and I try not to have too quick of a hook.”
Together, those individual stat lines added up to a strong showing offensively. Though the Buffs struggled with their shot sometimes, going a couple of extended stretches without a made field goal, they scored 82 points on 75 possessions, shot 46.9% from the field and 46.2% from 3-point range.
One of the more notable aspects of that offensive performance was that the team’s two leading scorers were newcomers appearing in their first game with the program – Hadley, a junior-college transfer, and Gabbidon, a graduate transfer from Yale.
While new players stepping into large roles can inflame petty jealousies and mess with team chemistry for some squads, that hasn’t been the case at Colorado, where Boyle has been praised for establishing a culture of selflessness in his 13 seasons at the helm of the program. It’s what allows a deep and balanced team to function properly.
“When I was in the recruiting process, coach Boyle told me this is a program where you're not going to have to worry about the character of the guys,” Gabbidon said. “This is the most unselfish group of guys you can find and since I've been here, that's been the truest statement ever. I feel like I've been here for years with these guys, with the way we interact in the locker room and the way we hang out off the court and on the court, the chemistry we have. I just think this is a phenomenal team. It's a team.”
In that way, the first game wasn’t something that will look like an outlier by the end of the season. This is who Colorado is going to be and the way it was designed to be.
“I think with this team, with the balance and the depth that we've just talked about, it might be different guys on different nights,” Boyle said. “That's the one thing I've really tried to impress upon the guys is. Tonight might not have been your night. You may not have gotten the minutes or the shots, but the next game might be. This is not going to be a team where we have to depend on one specific guy to go get us X amount of points every night. We've got a lot of different guys on this team that can score the ball in different ways. The fact that those guys were leading scores tonight, our next game played, it might be two totally different people. I see a lot of balance and a lot of depth on this team.”
Colorado star of the game
In his first game with the Buffs, Hadley was excellent, scoring a team-high 16 points and making six of his 12 shots. He also had a team-high three assists and eight rebounds, the latter of which is an important figure for a team that’s going to be short (no pun intended) on capable big men, at least for the early part of the season while younger players like Lawson Lovering continue to develop.
“Growing up, I’ve always kind of been counted out,” Hadley said. “Not a lot of people in this world thought I could play at this level. That’s one of the biggest things I try to do every single night – just proving that I belong here and I can play at this level.”
In his first game in Boulder, he certainly showed that.
Next in line
Gabbidon ultimately fouled out, but he made the most of his 17 minutes on the floor, scoring 12 points and making four of his five shots. He also dished out two assists.
The former Ivy League defensive player of the year was one of several Colorado players to spend time marking UC Riverside star Zyon Pullin, who finished with a game-high 17 points, but was held to five points in the first half – when his team fell behind by 18 – and had four turnovers.
Turning point of the game
The Buffs saw an early advantage disappear when a 12-4 run from UC Riverside gave the Highlanders a one-point lead, 15-14, with 11:14 left in the first half.
For Colorado, that deficit was short-lived. It countered with 14 unanswered points from five different players, led by four from Nique Clifford, over a stretch of just 3:11. Though UC Riverside eventually got back on the board, the Buffs continued to have their way. By the time Simpson finished off a layup in transition with 2:10 left in the half, his team was up 19, 39-20, and had outscored its opponent by a 25-5 margin since it had briefly fallen behind.
The Highlanders wouldn’t get closer than 10 for the remainder of the night.
Numbers of note
61.5: Colorado’s free-throw percentage (16 of 26)
38:38: The amount of time, out of a possible 40 minutes, that Colorado led Monday
21: Colorado’s largest lead of the night
22: Points Colorado got off of 15 UC Riverside turnovers
23: Margin by which Colorado outscored UC Riverside when Hadley was on the court
15: Offensive rebounds by UC Riverside, off of which it got 10 second-chance points
19: UC Riverside’s 3-point percentage (4 of 21)
Why Colorado won
This game went as so many similar matchups do at this early point on the college basketball calendar – a Power Five program with more resources and talent pays a smaller school tens of thousands of dollars to play a road game and, in the vast majority of instances, lose. On paper, Colorado is a better and deeper team, something that was apparent enough on the court for much of the night.
Aside from that brief spell midway through the first half, the Buffs dictated the tempo of the game, forcing UC Riverside to play at a pace with which it visibly wasn’t comfortable.
What’s next
The Buffs will return to the court on Friday with a matchup at Grambling State. It’s the first time in Grambling history that it will host a major-conference opponent. The matchup is a part of a scheduling partnership the Pac-12 formed last year with the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), a league made up of historically Black colleges and universities.
The game tips off at 6 p.m. MT.
