Tad Boyle praises KU basketball fans, Allen Fieldhouse after Colorado falls to Jayhawks
Colorado basketball coach Tad Boyle visited with his CU assistant/former Kansas teammate Danny Manning on Monday afternoon in Boulder before heading to the airport to travel to Lawrence for Tuesday’s night’s game in tradition-rich Allen Fieldhouse.
“I’ve been on both benches. I asked Danny yesterday in the office, ‘Have you ever been on the opposing bench?’ He said he hadn’t. So I said, ‘Well, it’s not quite as much fun, at least in my experience as the head coach at Colorado,’” Boyle told media members after a 71-59 loss to KU dropped the Buffs to 0-13 in the Big 12 and 9-15 overall.
“I know that’s the tradition of this building and obviously they are very, very difficult to beat here,” Boyle added of the Jayhawks after the Buffs’ 31st consecutive loss in Lawrence dating to 1984.
“The crowd is phenomenal. I don’t have to tell you Kansas is a special place. I would just say: Don’t take it for granted,” Boyle added.
Boyle, the 15th-year CU coach who was a teammate of first-year Buffs assistant Manning one season at KU, fell to 1-6 all-time coaching against the Jayhawks, 0-4 at Allen. Bill Self is 20-1 versus CU.
Boyle and Manning received loud ovations during pregame introductions from a listed crowd of 15,300 fans who braved a bad weather forecast to attend the game.
The Buffs gave the No. 17-ranked Jayhawks (17-7, 8-5) a battle, trailing by just five points (50-45) with 13:17 to play. It was an eight-point game (64-56) with 3:01 left, the Jayhawks building the lead to a comfy 15 points at 1:12.
CU played KU so well (Sebastian Rancik led the way with 19 points and nine rebounds) that one of the Buffs players confidently spoke to Bill Self while shaking hands with KU’s 22nd-year coach after the game.
“I had one of the (CU) players in line tell me, ‘Hey, we will see you in two weeks.’ I don’t know if it (rematch) is exactly two weeks. That’s how you want your players to be,” Self added of players exuding confidence.
The KU-CU rematch is set for 10 p.m. Central time on Feb. 24 at Coors Events Center in Boulder.
Self shook hands with both Manning and Boyle right before pregame introductions. Self also hugged Boyle and Manning after the game.
“I thought that the exchange (between Self and Manning) was something that, if it’s ever written, it could sell a lot of copies. It really could,” Self joked, indicating he asked Manning: “‘How’s your family?’ I said, ‘They (fans) still remember you here.’
“It was good to see D (Danny). Tad and I have gotten to be pretty good friends over the over the years, too. So it’s good to see those guys.”
Hunter Dickinson led the way with 19 points and nine rebounds while Zeke Mayo had 13 points, nine rebounds and five assists. KJ Adams had 10 points and five rebounds. Dajuan Harris had 10 points, six rebounds and five assists.
“KJ played really well tonight,” Self said of senior forward Adams. “He had the most athletic play obviously. He guarded the corner and goes down and blocks the ball in front of our bench. That was pretty athletic.
“During the start of the second half (when CU cut 14-point halftime deficit to eight) I thought that was about as poor as we could play from an energy standpoint defensively, but there were times where it was actually pretty good.”
Self referred to the game as a “pretty bland” win.
“I thought the most exciting plays of the game, no question, was when we could get the ball to KJ on short rolls where he could show his explosiveness, because everything else was just kind of, ‘Get through it,’” Self said. “We did some good things. I’m glad we won. But certainly we need to get better.”
Self praised the crowd that showed on a night with a bad weather forecast.
“Considering how we have played in (terms of) consistency, I thought it was a great crowd,” Self said. “I’ve never based our crowd on weather. Here, it seems like to me, people show up regardless. I think we had one game, I could be wrong, where it was so icy maybe 10 or 11,000 people were here — one time in 20 years or whatever, but they show up.
“The reason I thought that maybe the crowd would be less is just because how we’ve been inconsistent with our play. But, you know, they showed up without question.”
Of the crowd, CU coach Boyle, who like Manning was featured in a pregame video before player introductions, said: “Kansas fans have class. They’re knowledgeable. There’s very few of them probably here that remember me playing, but there’s a lot of them that remember Danny playing. It’s a class program. Bill has done an unbelievable job since he’s been here. Kansas is a gold standard. You look at the investments that they’ve made in this building since I played (for Ted Owens and Larry Brown). When I walked into Allen Fieldhouse there was a tartan track and blue canvas aprons. That was about it. They had some bleachers, and it was great on game night.
“But now you walk around here and you see all the bells and whistles they’ve invested in this program.”
KU will next meet Utah at 9 p.m. Central time on Saturday in Salt Lake City. The Jayhawks, who fly out Friday, will stay in Utah until after their game at BYU. KU will meet the Cougars at 8 p.m. Central on Feb. 18 in Provo.
