More consistency and proper execution required of Tad Boyle's freshmen

For Tad Boyle and Co., after Wednesday morning, it's six organized practices down, 24 to go before the team hits the road for Manhattan, Kansas to compete in the Little Apple Classic against South Dakota State and tourney host K-State.

Boyle and his upperclassmen alike have seen parallels between Colorado's true freshmen — guards Dominique Clifford and Luke O'Brien plus forwards Tristan da Silva and Jabari Walker — and the McKinley Wright IV-led Class of 2017.

Clifford's potential in particular reminded Boyle of two current NBA standouts.

“Dominique Clifford is going to be a terrific player before he leaves Colorado," Boyle said. "He’s got the size and athleticism and length — I’m not going to compare him to Spencer Dinwiddie or Derrick White — but he has the length, athleticism and skill level that those guys had when they were freshmen."

Anticipation for the kind of player Clifford can turn into is certainly there among Boyle and his coaching staff but at the end of the day, the 6-foot-5 greenhorn from Colorado Springs needs to continue developing.

"Can he put that together, with the mental part and the defensive ability that those guys had? Can he be as consistent as those guys were? That’s yet to be seen," Boyle said. "But from just a physical standpoint, athletic standpoint, skill standpoint — he’s a special player."

"We’ve got to dial into execution and finishing plays and making the right reads on ball screens, but I’m very, very excited and high on Dominique Clifford.”

Ultimately, for Clifford and Colorado's corps of freshmen, their execution during practice needs to match their potential and excitement surrounding them committing to and arriving on campus at Colorado.

“It’s baby steps and with freshmen, a lot of the time it’s one step forward and two steps back," Boyle said. "We got a lot of what I call ‘plus-minus’ guys, where they make really great plays and then they’ll have two plays where they just go brain dead because they’re still thinking the game."

"We’ve thrown a lot at them, a lot of offensive sets at them and a lot of offensive concepts. Defensively, we’ve been pretty relentless in terms of what we expect, and so they’re making a lot of mistakes."

It goes without saying that Boyle continues to feel frustrated about the initial cancellation of all Pac-12 competition back through Jan. 1 in August, something he found premature and also a decision that has put the Buffs in a bit of a hole considering the opportunities of working together as a team being lost.

For a coach needing to acclimate four true freshmen to the demands and style of playing Pac-12 basketball at Colorado, the frustration is certainly warranted.

Boyle, for his part, stresses that things didn't just magically return to normal upon the Buffs' first organized practice last week.

The time lost in the late summer and early fall for team activities is still being felt here and now as October comes to an end.

"Everybody says ‘well, you only need only 30 practices to get ready anyway,' — well, yeah, that’s true, assuming you have a normal fall where you can start instituting some of your team concepts in your workouts," Boyle said. "We had none of that — everything in the fall was individual skill improvement, which is important."

"But we got no team stuff done in the fall, like absolutely zero. So when practice starts, we’re behind the game."

The lack of a tangible precursor to organized practice has hurt the freshmen far more than the veterans who have been around the block.

With the tenured players, Boyle adopted a no-excuses attitude during practice on Wednesday while being more lenient towards the young bucks.

"I told (the players) before practice that our offensive emphasis of the day was ‘know your part of the play and execute your part of the play’ — It’s one thing to know it, it’s another thing to execute," he said. "I told the veterans: ‘If you don’t know the play — we haven’t put in anything new yet — get out. If you don’t execute the play — get out. We’ll sub you out.'"

"(I told the) freshmen: ‘If you don’t know the play, we’re going to have you get out. If you don’t execute the play, we’re going to stop it and coach the execution piece.’ It happened today quite a bit — the whistle would blow, this guy’s out, this guy’s in — we’ve got to get their concentration much, much higher than what it is right now."

Boyle went on to say that his group of freshmen are 'trending in the right direction' with respect to grasping concepts, understanding terminology as well as knowing and executing plays.

But at the end of the day, there is more progress that needs to be made before Nov. 25.

"The train is leaving the station and they’ve got to jump on," he said. "Sometimes, they might be dragging one day and the next day, they might have one foot on, one foot off — we need both feet on that train and knowing what direction it’s going.”

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