Big 12: Another beleaguered Colorado season
Colorado doesn’t have a lot of basketball fans. The question is not why there are so few. The question is, why are there so many.
Another beleaguered Buff season ended Wednesday. Colorado lost 82-67 to Texas Tech in the Big 12 Tournament at the Sprint Center. The Buffs finish 15-16 in Jeff Bzdelik’s third year as coach, bringing Bzdelik’s record to 36-58.
Colorado coach Jeff Bzdelik looks to a game official during the second half of a NCAA college basketball game against Texas Tech at the Big 12 Conference tournament on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, in Kansas City, Kan. (AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann)
Don’t be too down on Bzdelik. He seems to have upgraded the talent level, and these Buffs were much more competitive than in the past. “Successful people only momentarily get discouraged,” Bzdelik said. “We accomplished a lot as a basketball team. We’re building this program the right way. We understand that.”
Colorado didn’t start a senior Wednesday. Alec Burks, the Big 12 freshman of the year, scored a game-high 24 points. The Buffs are a lot more athletic than in years past.
But at some point, anyone with an interesting in Colorado basketball has got to be discouraged. No kidding, 17 years ago, I covered an Oklahoma State-Arizona State game in Tempe, Ariz., and then-ASU athletic director Gene Harris asked me what was wrong with Colorado basketball, why it couldn’t get going.
Relevant question, even more relevant now. Here are some sobering facts about the Buffs.
Since Sox Walseth coached Cliff Meely and Colorado to the 1969 NCAA Tournament and a 21-7 record, the Buffs have had 15 winning seasons. That’s 15 in 41 years. The Buffs have made two NCAAs.
Truth is, the maligned Ricardo Patton, fired three years ago after an 11-year run as Colorado’s coach, has been the highlight of Buff hoops over those 40 years. Patton went 184-160 overall, went to four NITs, four times had a winning Big 12 record and three times had a 7-9 league record.
Colorado is a basketball wasteland and has been for 40 years.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Patton was not fired. He coached out his entire contract and was not offered a new contract and when he saw that he would not be offered one, he stated he would coach out the season and would not seek or accept a new contract at Colorado.
Bzdelik won’t get it done at Colorado without a post player, and he ran off two that are playing major minutes at other schools (Sean Kowal at NIU, Caleb Patterson at Missouri State), and several others left the program for unknown reasons (Jeremy Williams, starting at UTEP, Veal at a Community College who was one of the most talented forwards last year), and another post player and transfer from Wake Forest (Crawford) has just left the program.
The wings are there, but there are NO post players that are formidable big twelve players at this point in time.