It hasn’t been a banner season for the Colorado men’s basketball program, and that extends to the attendance numbers.
Yet those who have ventured into the CU Events Center have noticed a curiously incomplete design in the northwest corner of the arena. Gone is the mural commemorating the champions of the 2012 Pac-12 Conference tournament. In its place is a banner for the men’s basketball Wall of Honor with mysterious blank spots instead of decorative portraits.
Those blank spots are about to be filled.
On Thursday, CU announced the honorees for its newly-created Wall of Honor, a group of 10 program all-timers whose jerseys will be displayed in that corner. According to a release from CU, the selections were based on those former players who “achieved at least five years of service in the NBA or competed on the world stage as an Olympic Gold Medalist.”
The 10 honorees are Chauncey Billups, Alec Burks, Jim Davis, Spencer Dinwiddie, Burdette “Burdie” Haldorson, Jay Humphries, Cliff Meely, Andre Roberson, Scott Wedman and Derrick White.
Each of the Wall of Honor members will be honored at different games, beginning with the three posthumous honorees –Davis, Haldorson and Meely — at Tuesday’s Arizona State game. The remainder of the new Wall of Honor recipients at will be recognized at future games as schedules allow, but Humphries is scheduled to be honored at the Feb. 8 game against Houston.
Boyle said he understood it would be a thankless endeavor, at least in the sense that no matter the criteria, a few very deserving players would be left off the list. Boyle said he wanted to focus on basketball alums who have shined the brightest at the NBA and international levels. That’s why a player like White — who was active for just one season at CU, and whose standout individual campaign in his only active season for the Buffs was with a disappointing NIT team — got the nod over players like, as one example, McKinley Wright IV, who is the program’s all-time assists leader, ranks sixth in scoring, and has an NCAA Tournament win to his credit.
Boyle said players like Wright and the program’s co-all-time leading scorers, Cory Higgins and Richard Roby, will likely one day find homes in the Wall of Honor.
“The Wall of Honor is more about what did you do after you left Colorado?” Boyle said. “The point of demarcation has to come somewhere when you do things like this. You want to honor both. I don’t know if Derrick White will be in the (CU) Hall of Fame for what he did at the University of Colorado. Never played in the NCAA Tournament. Only played one year. But his impact on our program has been pretty darn big, given his NBA career and his gold medal this summer. Derrick White deserves to be honored.
“I just felt like this is something that’s long overdue. When you walk in this building, there’s no honor to be past players.”
Boyle also indicated the honorees still active in the NBA — Burks, Dinwiddie and White — likely won’t make it back for a game until next season.
Notable
CU is set to travel on Friday morning for Saturday’s game at Arizona (1 p.m., ESPN+), with a practice scheduled in Tucson on Friday afternoon. … Former CU player Josh Fortune, who played on the 2015-16 NCAA Tournament team as well as the White-led NIT team the following year, visited practice on Thursday. Still an active professional internationally, it was Fortune’s first visit to Boulder since his CU career ended.
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