It wasn’t long after Colorado, with a great collective sigh of relief, officially landed the sixth NCAA Tournament bid under Tad Boyle when CU’s coach picked up his phone and made a call.
With a First Four matchup set in Dayton against Boise State on Wednesday night, Boyle wanted to bend the ear of one of his better friends in the coaching fraternity. That, of course, is nothing unusual. Yet it was likely one of the few times in NCAA Tournament history that sort of call was placed to the very coach looking to end his friend’s season.
When the Buffs lock horns with the Broncos on Wednesday (7:10 p.m. MT, truTV), it will be a battle of longtime coaching allies in Boyle and Boise State head coach Leon Rice.
As youngsters, Rice preceded Boyle as an assistant at Oregon in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and he was an assistant at Northern Colorado when Boyle was cutting his coaching teeth at Longmont High.
“Leon Rice is one of my dearest friends in the coaching business. We talk weekly throughout the season. Two, three times a week sometimes about our teams,” Boyle said. “He knows our team extremely well because he watches our games. I know his team extremely well because I watch his games.
“Now, the players, maybe not so much. But the coaches know. He’s familiar with us. I’m familiar with them. Now it’s a challenge to get our teams familiar and ready.”
Boyle and Rice have worked together each of the past two summers as well. Boyle was the head coach for USA Basketball’s U18 FIBA Americas team and the U19 World Cup team last summer, and he brought Rice on board as an assistant for both teams.
“We’ve had a lot of great times together and we really lean on each other,” Rice told BuffZone during last summer’s U19 training camp in Colorado Springs. “Tad really helps me through my hard times. I try to help him in the coaching hard times in the season. We bounce a lot of stuff off each other and we have a deep relationship.”
J’Vonne Hadley (1) of the Colorado Buffaloes speaks with head coach Tad Boyle during the second half of the Oregon Ducks’ 75-68 Pac-12 Tournament championship game win at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, March 16, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
First-round tournament matchups often begin with an air of unfamiliarity. Yet that won’t be the case in Dayton, and it extends beyond the close relationship between the head coaches.
CU and the Broncos squared off in the Myrtle Beach Invitational early last season, with the Broncos posting a 68-55 victory in which the Buffs shot just 35.8% overall while going 4-for-20 on 3-pointers. Given the impact of the transfer portal, a surprising number of key rotation players return from both sides from that matchup, including Tyson Degenhart, Chibuzo Agbo, Max Rice and Jace Whiting for Boise, plus KJ Simpson, Tristan da Silva, Luke O’Brien and Javon Ruffin for the Buffs (J’Vonne Hadley suffered a minor injury in the first game at Myrtle Beach and didn’t play against the Broncos).
Degenhart recorded 14 points and seven rebounds against the Buffs last year, and he enters Wednesday’s matchup as Boise State’s leading scorer (17.0) and second-leading rebounder (6.2).
“Going through the game plan from a year ago kind of gives you an idea of how they play, what kind of team they are, what their culture is,” da Silva said. “So it’s not like a completely new team, I’d say, but obviously they have new players, they have new roles. We’ve still got to make sure that we get a good game plan together and execute that.”
Boise State coach Leon Rice gestures during the second half of the team’s NCAA college basketball game against San Diego State on Friday, March 8, 2024, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)