Tad Boyle has talked about it before.
The goal, every year, is to improve from week to week, from game to game. It has been an elusive goal this season for the Colorado men’s basketball team, but one that has happened more seasons than not for the Buffaloes under Boyle. Even last year’s team, which went 3-17 in the Big 12 and finished with 21 losses, managed to go 5-5 from the end of the regular season through the conference tournament.
Still, Boyle also has noted that incremental improvement sometimes can be hard to see during the more difficult stages of the Big 12 schedule. Such will be the case this week.
After topping Arizona State 78-70 at home on Saturday, the Buffs will embark on a week as difficult as any in a league in which difficult weeks are the norm. CU visits No. 13 Texas Tech on Wednesday (6 p.m. MT, ESPN+) before traveling to Provo, Utah, to face No. 16 BYU on Saturday (2 p.m. MT, Fox Sports 1).
After suffering losses this past week — Texas Tech against No. 11 Kansas; BYU at Oklahoma State and again at home Saturday against No. 8 Houston — both teams are likely to drop at least a little when the new Associated Press Top 25 is released on Monday.
However, it’s unlikely either team will drop out entirely, and CU hasn’t defeated an AP Top 25 team in a true road game in 13 years, a streak that reached 23 games with a loss at Iowa State on Jan. 29.
“What we’ve got to do is take it on the road,” Boyle said. “Nothing’s easy on the road in this league. It’s not easy at home. But we’ve got to understand we’ve got to play with more toughness and more energy and more togetherness when we’re away from home, and we don’t have the crowd here to energize us. That’s the challenge. And guess what? We’ve got two challenges in front of us this week in Lubbock and in Provo against two really, really good teams.
“All you can ask for in life’s an opportunity. We got that. So let’s go see what we’ve got.”
CU (14-10, 4-7) broke an 11-game losing streak in true road games by opening Big 12 play with a win at ASU on Jan. 3, but the Buffs have gone 0-4 in the four Big 12 road games since. CU has hit a few ugly season-lows in those four games, recording a season-worst 17 turnovers in a loss at Cincinnati and surrendering a season-high 97 points at Iowa State.
And while the 30-point loss against the Cyclones might have been somewhat palatable, as ISU is a legitimate Final Four contender, the Buffs were equally noncompetitive in their most recent road game, a 19-point loss at Baylor in which the Bears led by 30 points with less than eight minutes remaining.
“It’s huge. Any win that you can take in the Big 12, you gotta take it because it’s a tough conference,” CU guard Barrington Hargress said. “Going on the road, playing some really tough teams, is going to be challenging and we’ve gotta hole down deep and we’ve got to get to work at practice.”
from The Denver Post https://ift.tt/jOp9YHi
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