Preseason to-do list long for CU Buffs men's basketball team – Boulder Daily Camera

As the Colorado campus still basked in the glow of an improbable football victory, the unmistakable sounds of basketball dribbling and the squeak of sneakers echoed through the CU Events Center.

The CU men’s basketball team began preseason practice Monday morning, officially marking the start of the 15th season under head coach Tad Boyle.

The Buffaloes are coming off a memorable 2023-24 campaign that included a program-record 26 wins, two NCAA Tournament victories and, later, three NBA draft selections. But now Boyle’s program is hitting the reset button.

Monday’s practice featured three incoming freshmen (Andrew Crawford, Felix Kossaras, Sebastian Rancik), three recent graduate transfers (Trevor Baskin, Andrej Jakimovski, Elijah Malone) and even two new assistant coaches, former NBA veteran Danny Manning and former Buffs star Evan Battey. The Buffs are also preparing to enter the Big 12 Conference, the toughest men’s basketball league in the country.

The preseason will be marked by a Buffs team that will remain a work in progress for the remainder of the season. In the six weeks between Monday’s opening practice and the Nov. 4 home opener against Eastern Washington, the Buffs will have plenty of work to do to define roles and determine what combinations work best on a versatile but largely inexperienced team. Here’s a look at three questions that will be the preseason priorities for Boyle and his staff.

Who will emerge in the backyard?

Julian Hammond III will start as the starting point guard. After Hammond, the Buffs will need someone who emerges as a reliable contributor in a roster marked by inexperience and unproven upside.

The hope is that Hammond can play more consistently like the player who had a stellar stretch at the end of the 2022-23 season with K.J. Simpson sidelined. Over the final five games of this season, including two games each in the Pac-12 Tournament and the NIT, Hammond averaged 13.2 points while shooting . 490 overall and 5 of 13 from 3-point range (. 385). Hammond also recorded 20 assists against eight turnovers during that five-game stretch.

Back and knee injuries limited Hammond to 24 games last season, though he finished with a career-high 7.4 points per game. Still, in the guard-heavy game of college basketball, the Buffs lack experience. Javon Ruffin is in his fourth year with the program, but he has played just 42 games after knee injuries cost him a full season and parts of two more. RJ Smith is a third-year player, but after redshirting as a freshman, his season ended last year after just seven games as a backup. True freshmen guards Felix Kossaras and Andrew Crawford, in addition to redshirt freshman Courtney Anderson, have yet to play a college game.

“When Ruff is healthy, in practice and in games, he shows that he can play at a very high level,” Boyle said. “With the combination (Ruffin and Hammond) and RJ Smith, who has been with the program since his third year, yeah, he’s unproven, but I have confidence in him. If I didn’t have confidence in RJ, if I didn’t have confidence in Julian, if I didn’t have confidence in Javon, we would have signed somebody. But our back line is probably the least proven of our positions.”

Can CU’s sophomore forwards take the next step?

Assane Diop and Bangot Dak played sparingly last year as the Buffs relied heavily on a veteran rotation. The 6-foot-10 Diop saw some minutes early last season, but those opportunities dwindled as the year went on. The 6-foot-2 Dak plays more like a big wing than a back-to-the-basket scorer.

All three Buffs graduate transfers are expected to play a role in the forward rotation. Still, Dak and Diop’s versatile skills were a big reason Boyle was comfortable with the idea of switching to a five-man offensive attack last year, believing the system would fit CU’s staff well beyond last season.

“The only thing I know is, from what I heard (from Dak and Diop) and from any competitive Division I athlete, they didn’t play as much as they wanted to last year,” Boyle said. “Now, they were playing behind some really, really good players. So guess what their opportunity is now? Their opportunity now is to say, ‘Well, coach, I should have played more last year.’ Let’s go prove it.”

Will the various new Buffs pieces manage to form a winning puzzle?

On the court, the Buffs have played with great cohesion in 2023-24, even as injuries have reshuffled the rotation throughout the season. Seven of this year’s 13 scholarship players have never played a single minute for the Buffs. Two others, Ruffin and Smith, have missed more time than they played during their tenures at CU. With the exception of Ruffin for a brief stint two years ago, Hammond is the only player who has ever been an integral part of the rotation. Finding the right mix of players who click, not just in the starting lineup but throughout the rotation, will be a preseason goal.

“Our identity has always been defense and rebounding, and that’s not going to change,” Boyle said. “But I think we’re going to become a team that can rely on each other because we have so many roles that we’re still working on. I think in these 30 (preseason) practices, we’ve got to get better at every aspect of the game. But we’ve got to fit in and take on some of those roles when we’re ready to play on Nov. 4.”

Originally published: September 23, 2024 at 3:43 p.m.