Colorado men’s basketball is stepping into the kind of nonconference slate that can tell you a lot before Big 12 play ever arrives.
Tad Boyle’s Buffaloes will see some of the most demanding early tests in the country, starting quickly with San Diego State in San Diego in the inaugural Bill Walton Classic on Nov. 7, then a home-and-home trip to Providence on Nov. 14, and later a Dec. 19 matchup with Purdue in Indianapolis. Add in the week-of-Thanksgiving trip to the Acrisure Series in Palm Desert, California, where CU will face Stanford and either Grand Canyon or Saint Louis, and there’s no shortage of chances for the Buffs to find out what they have.
Boyle is entering his 17th season at CU, and he knows the early schedule will do more than sharpen the team for league play. It may also expose how far Colorado’s basketball resources can stretch against programs with deeper pockets.
That reality came up naturally when Boyle talked about Purdue, a program that has become a model for long-term roster building under Matt Painter. Boyle sees the parallels.
Painter, like Boyle, has built his program on retention and development. But the differences, Boyle said, are hard to ignore when it comes to budget.
“Purdue is a program that has traditionally retained players and developed players like we have. I think they’ve done a better job of retaining players than we have in the NIL era,” Boyle said. “I’ve talked to Matt Painter about that, and I think a lot of it has to do with budget.
“(San Diego State’s) Brian Dutcher is a good coach. San Diego State’s a good program.
Providence has a new coach but they’ve got a really healthy budget. Nate worked there.
I know what they pay their players and how they recruit. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t beat them.
It just means we know they’re going to have talent. How quickly that talent comes together relative to how quickly our talent comes together - and what’s the talent discrepancy? - we don’t know that.”
Boyle’s connection to those programs runs deeper than a scouting report. His relationship with Painter goes back to their time as assistants in the Missouri Valley Conference - Boyle at Wichita State, Painter at Southern Illinois before he eventually took over there as head coach. And Providence is familiar ground too, with CU assistant Nate Tomlinson having worked there under Kim English, a former Buffs assistant who brought Providence to the Events Center last year before being fired after the season.
Colorado’s nonconference schedule also includes nine home games, beginning with the opener Nov. 2 against Abilene Christian. But as always, getting top-level opponents to come to altitude is no easy task, and the home schedule’s biggest draw is the Dec. 5 rivalry game against Colorado State.
Boyle said the transfer portal era has made scheduling even trickier, because teams often agree to games before rosters are truly set.
“The thing that’s changed is that it’s not as much about your team now as it is the opponent,” Boyle said. “I have no idea how good San Diego State is going to be. I know they’ve been good in the past but in today’s age of college basketball, we’re all dealing with the same issues.
“You’ve got to win games in November and December to put together a tournament resume. You’ve got to win those games to get your NET ranking.
We’ll be challenged. It’s just different scheduling now than it was because you don’t always know how your team is going to be when you schedule those games.
And you don’t know how the opponent’s going to be. It’s a little bit of the luck of the draw.”
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