Everything Tad Boyle said in his Colorado basketball media day press conference
Tad Boyle was in peak form on Wednesday when he sat down with the media to discuss his 2022-23 Colorado men’s basketball team. The Buffs’ 13th-year head coach is coming off back-to-back postseason appearances and if all goes well, March could once again be a busy month.
CU’s squad features a talented group of second-year players (including Quincy Allen and Javon Ruffin), an experienced junior class and a few older incoming transfers, including J’Vonne Hadley, Jalen Gabbidon and Ethan Wright. Boyle said he expects this year’s team to experience a similar learning curve to what happened last year, however.
Below is everything Boyle said to the media:
Opening statement
“I don’t know what to say other than it’s year 13 and I’m really excited to be here. Obviously, I got this job 13 years ago. I said it was my dream job and destination job. I still feel the same way today as I felt then. I really like this team coming up, it’s going to be a fun team to coach, got great kids. Selfless. I think it’s going to be a team a lot like last years in the sense that early we may struggle a little bit. We’ve got some returning guys that got to step up into different roles and be everyday guys when maybe last year they were pieces of the puzzle. So as that transition occurs, there may be some bumps in the road but we’re a resilient group. We’re a tough group and I like the pieces that we have together but I think by the end of the season, I think this team can be really dangerous and can certainly compete in the Pac-12 conference. It’s going to be a fun journey. Like I said, there’s going to be some adversity that hits us. We’re obviously without Evan Battey. One of the best leaders that I’ve ever coached. He’s gone. Guys like Tristan de Silva, Luke O’Brien, Clifford, KJ, Julian, all the returning guys have got to really step up the leadership aspects. I think that’s the biggest question mark with this team as I look forward, is where will the leadership come from when the waters get rough because we know they will at some point. But I got a lot of confidence in our players. I’m excited. That’ll open it up.”
On last year vs. this year
“I think the guys you’re talking about are Javon Hadley, who’s played two years of college basketball, one at Northeastern, one at the junior college level at Indian Hills, which is very high-level basketball for junior college, and then Jalen Gabbidon and Ethan Wright are two Ivy League guys. I think those guys are picking things up a little bit quicker than a freshman would and I think that’s a positive. They’re still trying to understand what our standards are, what Colorado basketball is all about. But they’re quick learners. They’re really smart players and we’re going to need all three of those guys at some point this year to fill in roles. We don’t recruit a lot of junior college players here, but J’Vonne made a lot of sense given the situation we were in last spring after a curveball was thrown at us. But we got a good player and the Ivy League guys, Ethan and Jalen, we’ve been really excited about them from the get-go. I really like those three and it’s nicer to have those guys than maybe three freshmen early, but will that translate to us winning games? I sure as heck hope so.”
On getting off to a good start
I have known this summer what we’ve had so we use our summer access months, and we used this fall to do a lot more installing of offense and the defense we kind of waited until practice started here a week or so ago. We wanted to accelerate that as best we could because we knew what’s facing us with our schedule and we saw what happened last year. Last year, we had Costa Rica. We had ten practices and we still struggled out of the gate. Maybe that was due to Pat’s point about plugging freshmen into those roles and this year we’ve got some more experienced guys but we really tried to accelerate that using the summer and the fall to get a jumpstart on that and hopefully that will translate. We’re at practice number seven it was and we’re farther along offensively than we ever have been at this point in terms of having stuff in. Now executing at the level we need to execute at that’s a different story. We’re on pace I think. We’ll learn a lot over the next three weeks or so. We’ll have a couple of inner squad scrimmages. We’ve got a close door scrimmage and we’ve got the exhibition charity game with Nebraska so we’ll learn a lot over the next three to four weeks.”
On recruiting Jalen Gabbidon and overall team IQ
“Jalen is a really bright player as Ethan is. They’re both high-level thinkers and there are probably 12 to 15 players in the Ivy League that could play in the Pac-12 or the Big-12. I mean, Ivy League basketball is good, and they’re two of them. They were two of the best players in the league last year, two of the top six I would say in the homework that we did. Jalen is a guy who’s very selfless. He’s a team guy. He wants to do whatever is going to help the team win. He was the Defensive Player of the Year in the Ivy League two years ago. He can make an open shot. He can slash the basket so he brings us great versatility. When I recruited Jaylen, again, he’s involved with a company in Denver and so that made Colorado make a lot of sense for him and so we’re lucky to have him and he’s going to help us a lot this year. Ethan is as well. Ethan’s a good shooter, good rebounder, sneaky athletic guy that maybe is a don’t judge a book by its cover kind of player because he’s an effective guy, so I am really happy to have both of them.”
On Jalen Gabbidon and Ethan Wright being leaders
“Number one, I think they have to believe that they belong and that’s something that as we get closer to game time, I’ve talked to them both about that a little bit. But, look, they come from great programs. Princeton is a winning program. Yale is a winning program. They’ve been really well-coached. I want them to believe and use the experiences that they’ve had at those programs and relay that to our younger players because they have been through the battles and been through the wars. Yeah, different league, maybe a different level but there are some good players and good teams in the Ivy League. I want them to believe that the experiences that they bring to the table are valuable and worthy and they can’t be afraid to open their miles, and right now they’re kind of checking me out and they’re not quite 100% sure what I expect yet but we’ll get there and we got to get there quickly. Again, both are really smart players and really good kids. I don’t know if the leadership is going to come so much from hey, this is how we’ve done things in the past, as it is as like, this is what you need to do to be successful at this level. They got to believe that because I believe in them.”
On KJ Simpson’s performance heading into this season
“I think the big thing with KJ we’ve talked about is limiting. Not eliminating, but limiting, his turnovers and becoming a more consistent, perimeter shooter, which he has become in the summer months. He’s spent a lot of time on his jump shot, and it looks smooth. I think he’s made that jump in his game. Now, it’s got to translate to the games, obviously, but KJ is a gamer. You guys saw that last year. He’s not afraid of the moment. He’s a competitive guy. He loves basketball. I think the biggest thing with KJ is he’s got to bring the energy, open his mouth, and lead this team. Last year, Evan was that guy who was kind of directing traffic from the five spot, but he’s gone. Now we got Tristan who’s doing a great job with that. But KJ can, especially in the position that he’s playing, the point guard position, and the scoring guard whatever you want to call it because he and Julian will play together some this year as well. They didn’t play as much together last year, as they will this year. But KJ’s biggest thing is just limiting his turnovers. He’s always going to have some turnovers because he’s played so aggressively and with reckless abandon. He’s just got to be really smart. One can’t lead to two and two can’t lead to three. He might have one here or there. It’s about becoming a consistent decision maker.”
On Quincy Allen and Javon Ruffin
“Yeah with those two guys it’s interesting. I see flashes of both those guys in practice. Quincy will make plays that just make your jaw drop. He’s so athletic. He’s so bouncy. He can block shots. Javon has had some really good moments as well in practice and making really smart basketball plays. He’s a big guard who can handle it, can shoot it, and pass it. I think the biggest thing with both those guys, is I look at them still as freshmen, even though they’re technically redshirt freshmen but they’re not the typical redshirt freshmen. The typical redshirt freshmen practiced their whole freshman year and now it’s game time and they’ve learned a lot. Well, those guys didn’t practice. They were on the sidelines hurt. It’s a lot different being on the sidelines trying to learn and being on the floor trying to learn. They’re on the floor trying to learn. Now terminology-wise, expectation-wise, what our standards are in this program, they should have a feel for that because they were here last year, but they’re still true freshmen on the floor because they didn’t get a chance to practice last year. Both of them have shown flashes, much like Joe Hurlburt and today was the first time we actually got RJ Smith a few reps in practice. He’s coming back from his knee injury now which I can’t wait to get him on the floor. It was great to see him today. There are two true freshmen on our team but really there are four if you throw those two guys in there as well.”
On Julian Hammond
“Julian, he’s that quiet guy that sometimes gets overlooked and probably the most steady, consistent guard that we have right now. KJ is the most explosive and can make plays that not many other guards his size can make. But Julian is rock solid steady. He has really improved his shooting. One of the challenges we gave Julian in the offseason was to become a better finisher inside the arc on his drives, on his pull-ups, and his floaters at the rim. He’s done a better job of that as well but it’ll be interesting to see again when the game start. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Julian. Julian’s kind of got that it factor that you can’t pinpoint what makes him effective. We had a function last night and when I was introducing Julian and I don’t mean this in any disrespect at all, I’m not sure he’s great at anything, but he’s really good at everything. He’s a really good shooter. He’s a really good passer. He’s a really good ball-handler. He’s a good decision-maker. He’s a good basketball player. He’s a good defender. We just need to keep building on those things and develop and hopefully become great at something but I got a lot of confidence in Julian because he’s got that it factor that you can’t coach.”
On the residual effect of Evan Battey
“I hope so. I hope there’s a residual effect. I look at guys like Luke and Nique and Tristan who are juniors who’ve been here. This is their third year. They had two years with Evan. They had one year with McKinley and Deshaun, and Dallas and that group. Hopefully, they learned what those guys brought to this program. We talked to them at the end of practice today about consistency, and being an everyday guy and those guys were everyday guys and that’s what we need. We need some guys to step up and be everyday guys. I hope that they saw what Evan brought. Look there’s only one Evan Battey. I’m not going to expect any of these guys to be Evan Battey. He’s one in a million actually, he’s one of a kind. But he’s gone. Hopefully, the guys that were with him learn from him and learn what he brought in terms of selflessness and a team-first attitude. He was a thumb guy first. He never pointed the finger. He always looked internally. If he was doing his job and his teammates weren’t doing their job, he wasn’t afraid to call him up and say, you got to step your game up. That’s leadership. That’s what we’re going to need, one or two or hopefully three of our returning guys to do this year.”
On turning the page after an upsetting end to the season
“One of the things we can learn from last year and again, we have control over one thing, and that’s the Colorado Buffaloes in this program. We don’t have control over the rest of the league and what they do. Last year’s team was hurt by the league’s performance in November and December in the non-conference. We finished fourth in the league, and It’s the highest we finished. Usually, you finish fourth in the power five league and you’re in the NCAA tournament. We weren’t, we’re on the outside looking in because of our performance in November and December and the league’s performance. We can’t control the league, we can control ourselves. Hopefully what our guys learned is that game against UC Riverside, It’s pretty darn important. That game against Southern Illinois in the Virgin Islands was an important game. We tricked it off. We lost it and that hurt us. The opportunity to play Tennessee and Nashville, that’s a heck of an opportunity for this program. Hopefully, our young guys have learned you have to embrace every game and sometimes the games that you lose in November and December, come back and haunt you in March. If we can take that to heart and understand every one of those opportunities is a chance to improve our chances at the end of the year to be an NCAA tournament team and we better take advantage of it.”
On Lawson Lovering
“Freshman year to sophomore year he missed the last 15 games of the season last year. He was really coming on. I think the biggest thing with Lawson is his physical development. He had a great summer in the weight room with Steve Englehart, our strength and conditioning coach, and that’s going to pay dividends for him this year and then mentally. Lawson’s a guy that, I’ve said it before, he’s very difficult on himself and so when things don’t go his way, sometimes the head goes down the shoulder slump we can’t have that this year. He’s got to be able to play through mistakes. When you got Evan Battey there and Lawson’s struggling it’s easy to have a fallback guy. Well, we don’t have a fallback guy this year, Evan is gone. Lawson is going to have to play and play through mistakes even though we can play Joe Hurlburt there if things get tough and we can also play Tristan (Da Silva) at the five as well and go small, but Lawson’s going to play. He’s going to play through mistakes and I think he’s going to grow and develop into a really, really good big man in the Pac-12 Conference. The CU fans did not see the real Lawson Lovering last year and again, he’s not a finished product yet. It takes big guys a while to develop and grow, but he’s on the right track and he’s a great ball screen defender who can guard the ball. He’s a good rim protector being seven feet tall. Not a great perimeter shooter yet, can finish though around the basket has good hands and but defensively he can be a force for us.”
On KJ Simpson and McKinley Wright
“KJ never played with McKinley but I think he’s got great respect for him as anybody that knows McKinley does. I think it’s important to KJ and when he talks to McKinley I don’t think it’s necessarily trying to emulate him, but just learn from him. KJ has got some things that McKinley didn’t have and McKinley has got a few things that KJ doesn’t have. If he can incorporate some of those things, I look at McKinley as the kind of rebounder he was for a guard his size, his ability to get through ball screens and be a force defensively because KJ has got unbelievable quickness and speed. He could be a menace defensively like McKinley was so those are the things that I hope as he has those conversations with McKinley as he is he incorporates the things into his game that maybe weren’t there and takes that from McKinley because of speed and athleticism and open floor he is a really really dynamic player as we’ve seen in spurts. He just needs to become that everyday guy that McKinley was and he’s on the right track. He really is. He’s had a good first week of practice and I’m encouraged by KJ’s development thus far.”
On Luke O’Brien
“Luke’s ability to be consistent, how’s it going to impact the game, Luke was our best shooter this summer. We’ve got this system in place it’s a shot tracker where there’s a chip on the ball and a chip in their shoe and every time they take a shot, it’s tracked and so as we in our summer access hours we had those chips on and he was by far the best shooter this summer so you can really stroke it. He’s a more confident mature player. I think he’s got good size now, he’s really developed his body. He can help us rebound. One of the questions we get all the time is how are you going to replace Jabari Walker’s rebounding, hopefully, Luke O’Brien can give us two or three more a game. Hopefully, Nique Clifford could give us two or three more a game, and hopefully, our guards KJ and Julian (Hammond) get one or two more a game. Hopefully, Tristan can up his numbers. I think rebounding and being a consistent everyday guy that is now a junior and plays like a junior. I think that’s the challenge. A lot of times my expectations of freshmen are usually not very high. It’s a little bit higher for sophomores. If you’re a junior in this program, I expect a lot out of you. I expect you to know what your job is and hold your teammates accountable to that. I always say freshmen want to play, sophomores want to score. If you’re a junior and you don’t want to win or a senior and you don’t want to win we’re going to have problems. So what is Luke going to do to affect winning for us, there are a lot of things he can do. Rebounding, defending, making open shots, he just needs to be Luke O’Brien and not try to be everything to everybody and just concentrate on the things he does well, because he does some things really, really well for us.”
On Tristan Da Silva taking over for Jabari Walker
“I felt like this even last spring when Jabari was making this decision. Maybe there was no decision I don’t know. Maybe he knew he was leaving all the time but I told Tristan if Jabari does leave in fact, it’s going to benefit you personally because you’re going to be able to step into a bigger role. Not that he and Jabari didn’t play together they did but you’re right Jabari was so productive and Tristan is such a team player but now being a junior, like we talked about with Luke like we’ve talked about with Nique those three guys now have to play like juniors and I almost look at them as seniors, even though they’re not, thank God they each have another year but Tristan is far and away. He is our most consistent and his intelligence, his knowledge of the game, and his feel for the game. He’s much more comfortable and confident now. I expect him to be a first-team All PAC 12 player, I really do if we can win enough games. That will happen because Tristan is going to be on the floor and he’s going to be on the floor a lot and he can play multiple positions. You can guard multiple positions, having a guy like him as a coach makes you feel good.”
On losing the top three-point shooters
“I think this team has a chance to be a good shooting team. I really do. Ethan Wright can shoot the ball, and Jalen Gabbidon can shoot the ball. Tristan is a much-improved shooter, we talked about Julian, KJ, improving his jump shot. Quincy Allen can make shots. Luke is a great shooter Nique. We’ve got multiple good shooters so I don’t worry about losing our top three three-point shooters, but we did lose our top three scores as well. That scoring production is going to have to be up. Tristan’s numbers will go up KJ’s numbers and it’s not one guy. It’s just kind of everybody chipping in because this is a unique team I think in that I look at our team and I could say we could have six to seven, maybe eight guys that could be our leading scorers on any given night. Usually, you say we’re going to have one or two or three guys who are going to lead us in scoring tonight. This team is going to be really well balanced I think. We’ll figure out the roles as we evolve as the season plays out but we got multiple guys who can make shots and multiple guys who can score the ball. We’ve just got to make sure we’re defending and rebounding consistently and keeping us in games and then hopefully making enough shots to get us over the top.”
On how losing big leadership affects him
“Maybe that comes with age or wisdom I don’t know what it comes with but I look at guys like KJ and Julian that are playing the point guard position and a guy like Tristan. Evan was so unique in that I could go to Evan and say okay we had a bad practice today, you’ve got to fix it, and he’d fix it. The next day we wouldn’t have a bad practice. I’m going to have to do the same thing with Tristan, or KJ or Julian or whoever and that’s what we’re trying to figure out right now, who has influence in the locker room, who’s not afraid to open up their mouth and maybe ruffle a few feathers if they need to be ruffled. You have to have that on your team. If you don’t, it all falls on me and that’s my job but I’ve always said player-led teams are so much more powerful and successful than coach-led teams. Those guys have got to take ownership, you’ve got to take leadership responsibilities, you’ve got to be willing to open up their mouths and talk and something that we’re in the process of hopefully developing but we better develop it pretty quick.”
On how this team compares to teams in the past
I don’t know the answer to that question until we get really tested. I think every team as you go into the season has hopes and aspirations and dreams and goals. The only time you find out about yourself is when you know what hits the fan and that hasn’t happened to us yet. It hasn’t happened to anybody yet. You don’t know that until it happens but I think what we’ve talked about up to this point, the leadership is, is there going to be somebody that’s going to be able to rally the troops in that locker room when things get tough and bounce back? One of the traits about the team two years ago when we had all of our seniors that I thought were positive and something I respected about those guys, I don’t think we ever lost two games in a row except once in the season. We always bounce back after a win. There was a back-to-back loss, one at home and then one to Oregon on the road but the Oregon loss on the road was because we couldn’t make a shot that night. We lost by two, but we were resilient. Resiliency I think with teams is really important and I think this team can be a resilient team, we’ll find out, I don’t know the answer yet but I think it will. We’ve got some guys that care. They care about the team, they want to win. We talk all the time about when we put the jersey on, we represent more than just ourselves. We represent the university, we represent the athletic department, we represent Boulder, Colorado, the state of Colorado, and we represent every former player that’s worn that uniform. There’s a lot of responsibility that goes with putting that thing on, and we better take that seriously. If we do and we own it, like our chances.”
On filling in for Eli Parquet
“We’ve got a couple of guys that can fill that role. I think Nique is certainly one of them. Nique’s got the length, he’s got the experience now, and his body’s gotten stronger. Nique again, much like we talked about with Luke, he’s got the ability to affect the game in a lot of different ways. Defensively, offensively ball in his hands, slashing, cutting, getting out in transition and defensively. I think J’Vonne Hadley is a guy who brings unbelievable competitive spirit and energy to our team defensively. I look at J’Vonne and Nique. Those guys could fill that kind of defensive stopper role, but look, we want all of our guys to have that mindset, not just one. Now Eli was pretty special because he was so strong and athletic and he kind of bought into that so we’re going to need somebody to buy into that. We don’t want just one-dimensional players. We want multi-dimensional players and certainly Nique and J’vonne Hadley defensively right now can do a lot of things for us because they’re both long and athletic. J’Vonne Hadley’s energy level and toughness are going to help us this year.”
On what the conference looks like
“I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s October so I guess Oregon has started practice but they’re on the quarter system and sometimes they add guys the third week of September that pops up, I don’t know if that’s happened, I don’t think it has. To be honest with you, my head has been dialed into Colorado and what we’re going to do. I do know that with UCLA’s returning players Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Tyger Campbell, I can’t wait until they graduate, they’re really good. Arizona’s going to be good this year. USC is talented. There are a lot of teams like Arizona State and Washington who have kind of re-tooled, I think there are question marks I don’t know. Washington State has had some turnovers. I know the coaching in this league is really good. From top to bottom I don’t have a feel for the talent level yet. I’ll get a feel for that more as the games start and as I start watching scores. Obviously, we’ll be dialed into Arizona State and Washington because we have them in December a little bit more. The rest of the league, I’m not thinking about them right now. I do know that the usual suspects like Oregon, Arizona, and UCLA will be really solid. We’ll find out a lot about our league in November or December.”
