Beat writer Pat Rooney looks at three issues surrounding Colorado men’s basketball ahead of a visit to No. 8 Iowa State.
Lowly numbers
During his postgame press conference following Saturday’s 95-86 defeat at home against Central Florida, Tad Boyle reminisced briefly about his first team at Colorado, back in 2010-11.
Like this year’s Buffaloes, that team struggled to stop teams. But, led by Alec Burks and Cory Higgins, that squad was so good offensively it often could win the sort of shootouts that have mostly ended in disappointment this season.
As Boyle noted, this year’s team may not be quite up to that lofty offensive standard from 16 years ago, but the 2025-26 Buffs have shown they will play high-level offense more often than not. Yet they aren’t quite good enough to overcome a defensive performance that is shaping up to be the worst in Boyle’s 16 seasons in Boulder.
CU goes into Thursday’s big challenge at No. 8 Iowa State (5 p.m. MT, Fox Sports 1) with a defensive field goal percentage of .458. That ranks 13th in the Big 12 to begin the week, and it’s the highest by a Boyle-coached team, on pace to top the .448 mark recorded by his first CU team in 2010-11. In the decade and a half since, the only team to finish with a defensive field goal percentage higher than .432 was the 2023-24 NCAA Tournament team, with finished at .440. Even last year’s team, which finished last in the Big 12 with the eighth 20-loss season in program history, finished in a virtual tie for ninth in defensive field goal percentage (.432).
The Buffs’ defensive 3-point percentage of .371 is trending similarly, as the highest percentage of the Boyle era was a .367 mark recorded in 2016-17.
Rotation woes
The Buffs have stuck to a nine-man rotation for the bulk of the season. Boyle has talked about the razor-thin margin for success his team has in conference play, and so it’s no accident the Buffs’ five-game losing streak has coincided with monumental struggles by a third of the rotation.
Felix Kossaras’ scoreless outing against UCF was his second in the past four games. Elijah Malone’s struggles have been magnified by minutes shortened by issues both self-inflicted (a quick foul-out at West Virginia) and out of his control (an early injury exit against Kansas). Still, in 27 ½ minutes over the past four games, Malone has recorded just four points and five rebounds, with four of those rebounds happening at Cincinnati two weeks ago.
And while Josiah Sanders’ contributions off the bench haven’t been as integral as Kossaras and Malone, the freshman guard has gone scoreless in the past three games.
Certainly that trio isn’t the only reason the Buffs are scuffling. Bangot Dak and Alon Michaeli are battling shooting slumps, while Sebastian Rancik broke out of one against UCF. But when the Buffs were at their best earlier this season, they were getting timely contributions from across the entire rotation.
Slumping
CU has lost five consecutive games for just the fourth time in Boyle’s 16 seasons, but two of those runs have occurred in the past two years.
The Buffs, of course, lost their first 13 Big 12 games last year to set the stage for a last-place finish. CU also started 0-7 in the Pac-12 during the 2016-17 season and lost the final five games of the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season.
Boyle lamented missing out on a “winnable” game against UCF in a revealing choice of words. The Buffs certainly are heading to Ames, Iowa, this week with an upset on their minds, but coaches are realists, too. Deep down, they know some games are more winnable than others, and that’s what magnified the sting of Saturday’s defeat.
By missing out on a win against UCF, CU is staring at the losing streak hitting six at Iowa State before hitting a more favorable stretch of games against TCU, Baylor and Arizona State.
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