CU men’s game times, TV info finalized
Buffs to appear on national networks more than a dozen times Filip staying on left side of OL
Colorado fans eagerly looking past the football season for a little basketball can start making watch party plans.
On Thursday, the Pac12 Conference released the tipoff times and television information for the 202223 men’s basketball season. The Buffaloes begin the 13th season of the Tad Boyle era on Nov. 7 at home against UC Riverside in a contest that tips off at 6:30 p.m. and will air on Pac-12 Mountain.
CU’S 31-game slate includes 11 appearances on the various ESPN networks, though in six of those cases the specific channel will be determined later. Included in those appearances is the Dec. 8 rivalry showdown at home against Colorado State, which will tip off at 7 p.m. and air on ESPN2. The Buffs also will play on ESPN2 at home against USC (Feb. 23) and will play on the main ESPN network against Tennessee in Nashville on Nov. 13.
Both of CU’S games against UCLA will air in marquee spots on one of the traditional national networks, with the Jan. 14 game in Los Angeles airing on FOX and the Feb. 26 home date set for CBS. The January game at UCLA will start at either 1 p.m. MT or 6 p.m. MT, depending on FOX’S schedule for the NFL Wild Card round. That start time will not be determined until six days ahead of the game.
As it stands, the second game of the season at Grambling State on Nov. 11, part of the inaugural year of the Pac-12’s scheduling agreement with the Southwestern Athletic Conference, is not slated to be televised. Outside of the tobe-determined matchups in the final two games of the Myrtle Beach Invitational, only three tipoff times remain undetermined — the UCLA road game, the Dec. 21 home date against Southern Utah, and the final road game of the regular season at Arizona on Feb. 18 (6 or 8 p.m. MT).
Once again, the radio broadcast for every game will air on KOA 850 AM (KHOW 630 AM when there are conflicts with CU football, which will be the case at Grambling State, Broncos games, or Rockies spring training baseball later in the season). conditioning on his own. He’s doing some shooting. He’s on the sideline, he’s listening. That’s different than being out there, but we hopefully will have him at practice by the first week in November.”
Boyle doesn’t typically make redshirt decisions until at least a few weeks into the regular season, given the wild card of possible injuries. But he admitted Smith could be a candidate for a redshirt, given his late start and the wealth of more experienced two guards on the roster — returning starter Nique Clifford, Javon Ruffin, and graduate transfers Jalen Gabbidon and Ethan Wright.
“That’s something that we’ll talk to him about when that time comes,” Boyle said. “We’ll give him some practice time to figure that out.”
No team in the country is giving up more yards on the ground than Colorado.
Arizona hasn’t been much better.
As CU (0-4, 0-1 Pac-12) prepares to visit Arizona (2-2, 0-1) on Saturday (7:40 p.m., Pac-12 Networks), both head coaches believe they’ve got tackling issues to fix in order to improve against the run.
The Buffs are allowing 323.3 rushing yards per game — 63 more than anyone else in the country. Arizona ranks 125th, giving up 228.3 yards per game.
“It’s usually the same thing, which would be tackling,” Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch said about his run defense. “It’s that first tackle breaking through. The other part of it is we weren’t necessarily in our gaps. We weren’t as gap sound as we’d like to be.”
Colorado head coach Karl Dorrell has expressed the same concerns with tackling and gap integrity.
During the season, there is a fine line with trying to fix tackling issues, while keeping the players healthy.
“You still have to work on it,” Dorrell said. “That’s the thing usually, when you’re a good tackling defense you don’t need to practice it as much. It’s more scheme in terms of your concentration of practice of your opponent, but we’re having to do scheme and do some tackling things to help shore things up just because that’s the nature of where we are.
“It’s one of those necessary evils you have to do even though you’re in the middle of the season. But we need to improve. The team knows that. They haven’t squawked about it. They understand they need the work and it’s been working pretty well so far.”
Fisch said the Wildcats do tackling drills, but don’t tackle to the ground in an effort to prevent injuries in practice.
“At this point in the season, you’re in week 5, to start tackling guys to the ground … we really can’t do that,” he said.