Strike 1: Colorado’s Tad Boyle is as old school as basketball coaches can get. He began back in the good ‘ol days when you recruited a high school star and brought him to Boulder for the next three or four years – and kept doing that year by year, building the foundation of a title contending program. That stuff is in Tad’s wheelhouse.

But that was then, back when Boyle’s Buffs won the Pac-12.

Now, just like every established college coach – and some have bailed out along the way – Tad has had to get up to speed with the new way of building a roster and putting a competitive college basketball team on the court. This has been going on over the course of the past decade. The transfer portal. Name, image and likeness cash. Agents. Lack of patience.

Not his favorite stuff.

But there’s one area where Boyle can still apply his vast amount of basketball experience: On the court, as in having his team play the game the right way. His way.

This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for Boyle’s Buffaloes. A large number of new faces, and some new languages to boot, with a group of incoming players, several from foreign countries, all trying to mesh. It was going to take time.

Then again, maybe not that much time after all.

These Buffs look like a team that could actually hold their own in the powerful Big 12 this season. That’s because on the court they play the game the right way.

Colorado (8-1 overall) lost their first game of the season to Colorado State (7-2) in Fort Collins on Saturday, but not because CU played poorly. Quite to the contrary. The Buffs were excellent. In their first true road test of the season in front of a very hostile crowd, Colorado scored 86 points on 62% shooting. They repeatedly ran their offense smoothly and got the ball inside for high percentage shots almost at will. And even though they gave up 91 points, they actually played pretty good defense, too. They charged back from a second half deficit and they nearly overcame an insane Ram’s three-point shooting barrage to take down the hosts who had every emotional advantage on their side.

Throughout the game, the undersized Rams ran a lot of ball screens, mostly above the 3-point line, just trying to get a semi-open look for sharpshooters Josh Pascarelli and Brandon Rechsteiner. It worked. While they were able to do virtually nothing in the paint, because they shot an unimaginable 18-for-35, that’s better than 51%, from behind the arc – oftentimes with a Buff defender in their face – CSU won the rivalry game. In every way other than three-point shooting, CU was the better squad.

So if you’re a Buffs fan, the good news is that this relatively young squad that featured eight freshmen and three sophomores stayed patient and disciplined the entire contest. The Buffs committed just five turnovers. As the rest of the season unfolds, if they continue to play the game the right way – the Tad Boyle way – they’re going to shock a lot of observers who aren’t expecting anything from Boyle’s group this season.

And even when they get into Big 12 conference play, it’s pretty unlikely that they’re going to see anything like the 3-point onslaught they witnessed in FoCo. And if they do, their old school coaching will have them ready for it.