Tad Boyle commends his players' effort and sacrifice ahead of season opener
Buffaloes head coach Tad Boyle joined reporters on Monday morning to discuss Colorado's impending Nov. 25 season opener vs. South Dakota. Boyle also provided a health update and talked about potential contingency plans that could be put into place in the event a CU opponent has to cancel a scheduled game.
Boyle already feeling out contingencies in the event of a cancelled game:
On Friday, Colorado State paused all men's basketball activities for two weeks following a pair of positive COVID tests within the program, the university announced.
Originally slated to face Cal Berkeley and Oregon State in Corvallis this week, instead the Rams won't be doing anything as a program until at least Dec. 2.
That also most likely means that the Rams will not play Mountain West opponent San Diego on Dec. 3.
As it pertains to Colorado, the Rams are due to face the Buffs at the CU Events Center on Tuesday, Dec. 8. Pending no more COVID cases within the Rams locker room, that matchup in theory should be good to go.
However, in the coronavirus age, nothing is certain. Boyle plans to keep his finger on the pulse of CSU's status in hope of being able to host the Rams in early December.
"I’ve talked to (Rams head coach) Niko (Medved) after I saw what happened with the Colorado State program — we’ll be in constant contact between now and Dec. the 8th," Boyle said. "We’re hopeful that that game could still go on."
Even now, Boyle is exploring preliminary options for a potential backup plan, should CSU — or anyone for that matter — be unable to play on a given date.
"We’re certainly trying and we want those contingency plans in place," Boyle said. "We have to stay nimble this year. I’ve had conversations with Jeff Linder at Wyoming...Rodney Billups at DU — I know they’re in a pause right now — but I’ve had conversations with him and Joe Scott at Air Force."
"All the people on the Front Range, we have been in contact with and we’re certainly open to that scenario, if we lose games — and we very well may — so we’re trying to stay nimble and trying to get in as many games as we can.”
With the season is finally around the corner, it's all systems go for the Buffs, regarding a COVID-free roster
To date — and Boyle would agree that a knock on wood preface the rest of this sentence — Colorado has not had a single COVID case among its players, many of whom have been in Boulder since early in the summer.
Ahead of Wednesday night's season opener vs. South Dakota within the Little Apple Classic, hosted by K-State, Boyle couldn't help but reflect on the combined effort of all of his players in getting to this point.
Every individual decision — whether that may be choosing not to go over to a friend's house to play video games, avoiding a party or foregoing something more understandable, like celebrating a birthday or holiday with family — Colorado's players have all subscribed to living their lives with the mutual goal of staying COVID-free and playing this season.
The way Boyle sees it, their effort has been nothing short of commendable.
“These kids have worked too hard (and) they’ve come too far," he said. "Most of our scholarship players have been on campus since June the 7th. Now, they went home for a little bit in August, had to do some quarantining when they came back, but you think about it — from June 7th to now, they’ve handled business, they’ve worked hard, they have sacrificed socially, they’ve sacrificed with their families and not being around them and seeing them when they would like to.”
Video from Tad Boyle's Monday press conference with reporters is below:
No injury report to report:
While the Buffs have remained healthy in terms of experience no COVID setbacks, Boyle indicated that in terms of more basketball-related health, there's not much to report.
Boyle did mention that overall, he'd like to see a more across-the-team robustness in terms of conditioning, but regarding any ailments or injuries, it appears he'll have a full deck of cards heading into Wednesday's game vs. South Dakota.
“We’re all good," he said. "We’ve got all hands on deck as of now. You’re going to start tapering down practices a little bit as we get closer to gameday but we’ll still go hard. But yeah. Everybody’s healthy. Everybody’s good to go — no issues there.”
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