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It was one poorly executed play among countless others this season. Yet it perhaps encapsulated the struggles of the player involved, and the fortunes of the entire Colorado men’s basketball team, in one regrettable moment.
In the waning moments of the first half at Stanford on Dec. 29, Nique Clifford grabbed a defensive rebound with 21 seconds remaining and the Buffs trailing by four points.
With Tad Boyle screaming to hold for one shot and point guard KJ Simpson calling for the ball, Clifford instead pushed the pace and attempted a coast-to-coast conversion. Just four seconds after that rebound, Clifford missed on a wild layup attempt, giving the Cardinal a final possession before the break.
That miscue ultimately didn’t hurt the Buffs. Stanford didn’t connect on its bonus possession, and thanks to some late heroics from Simpson, Colorado rallied for what at the time was an impressive road win. And that end result is part of the story, too. Colorado did just enough to stir hope.
Yet with Clifford and two now-former teammates, Lawson Lovering and Quincy Allen, exiting through the transfer portal and head coach Tad Boyle left to assess what went wrong in 2022-23, that moment late in 2022 is a perfect example of why the Buffs need to reboot in the spring and summer of 2023.
In this space at the outset of the season I said this should be an NCAA Tournament squad. This is the column where I admit I was wrong. It feels wrong by a wide margin, but the reality is the Buffs only needed to turn around a couple bad losses to be in the mix for the NCAA Tournament (at Cal and holding on to a late lead at home against Arizona State are the top two in my book).
It was that solid NET ranking throughout the season — spurred by early-season wins against Tennessee and Texas A&M, plus strong seasons by nonconference foes like Boise State, Yale and Grambling State — that allowed a CU team that hovered around .500 for much of the season to still land a No. 2 seed in the NIT.
Watching this team in the preseason, I believed the depth and balance would be huge assets. They shared the ball well, and that trait remained throughout the season. In the end, however, they only shared in the offensive struggles. That balance, the idea a different player inevitably would step up on a given night, didn’t show up. More often than not the Buffs struggled to get anyone to step up offensively beyond Simpson and Tristan da Silva.
Where did it go wrong? I certainly didn’t expect such wide-ranging shooting woes. The 2022-23 Buffs arguably were the worst 3-point shooting team in Boyle’s 13-season tenure. They finished with a .322 mark, and while technically the 2013-14 team posted a lower percentage (.318), that team played the second half of the season without its best 3-point shooter, Spencer Dinwiddie.
This will always be the team Boyle critics will point to when frustrated with his defense-and-rebounding-first approach. CU remains 31st in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency at KenPom.com, and the Buffs finished fourth in the Pac-12 in average rebounding margin. It was the shooting woes and, during the first half of the season, turnover issues that held the Buffs back.
Individually, Clifford’s struggles and Simpson’s second-half slide stand out as the biggest misses, though the Buffs had plenty of other shortcomings beyond that duo. Clifford has all the skills to be a premier wing, but simply couldn’t put it together. Simpson earned second team All-Pac-12 honors, but any return to NCAA tourney contention will most likely require improved consistency. He shot .450 overall, .354 on 3-pointers, and posted a 1.58 assist-to-turnover rate in the season’s first 15 games. In his final 14, he shot .330 overall, .154 on 3-pointers, and recorded a 1.42 assist-to-turnover rate.
Every offseason feels like a critical one as soon as the season ends and the look-ahead begins. This one certainly rates as an important one for Boyle and his staff, who have two open scholarships to work with in hopes of bolstering the returning core that is set to welcome one of the top recruits in the nation in Cody Williams in addition to an athletic 6-foot-10 forward in Assane Diop.
Maybe the NCAA Tournament was a lofty goal for this bunch, yet it nonetheless was a team that underperformed compared to its talent level. If Boyle and the Buffs can turn around that disparity by the fall, it likely will be a different story next year.
