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5-HOUR ENERGY PUERTO RICO TIP-OFF MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 1, 2011

Tad Boyle

TIM SIMMONS: Coach Boyle, good morning. Can you talk just a little bit about your pre-season drills today.
COACH BOYLE: Yeah, you can probably tell by my voice I've been talking a lot. We've been getting after it. We've only had 14 practices, so we still have work to do between now and the time we get to Puerto Rico.
I like our team. We're relatively healthy. We've got usually 12 or 13 bodies at practice every day. But our team right now has a lot of unknowns relative to where we were last year. We lost over 75% off of our scoring off of last year's team. We have a few guys returning, but a lot of new faces.
We're trying to blend the veterans with the transfers we had sitting out along with our new recruits. Like most teams right now, we're kind of a work in progress.
TIM SIMMONS: I don't know if it's a fact, but you're probably the only coach to coach in three different conferences in three different years. What are your thoughts about that?
COACH BOYLE: Well, yeah, I feel a little bit nomadic right now. The good thing is we are in the conference, the PAC-12, going forward. We got a great place to call home. We're trying to obviously use that in recruiting, establish ourselves here in year one.
TIM SIMMONS: You have an interesting bracket to start with in Puerto Rico. Obviously you play Wichita State, which you saw back in New York. In the second round you either get Maryland, coached by Mark Turgeon, a former associate of yours, or Alabama. What do you think about your bracket?
COACH BOYLE: Pretty interesting. Like you said, three of the four final four teams from the NIT are in it from last year, then one of my best friends. I'd rather not play Mark. But we'll just see where everything falls.
Of course, I spent six years at Wichita State as an assistant coach when I was with Mark Turgeon there. There will be a lot of friends from Wichita that will be making the trip to Puerto Rico. It will be an interesting matchup for me personally.
But I got a lot of respect for their program. Gregg Marshall has done a wonderful job there. It's a storied program.
TIM SIMMONS: First time you played in this tournament format where you have two games, off a day, then play in the game on Sunday. Is that a good format for your team right now?
COACH BOYLE: Yeah, I think it is. Three games in three days would probably be a little bit much especially this early in the season. I like the back-to-back. It's going to give our staff an opportunity to be challenged, especially this early. We'll have to be doing scouting reports on the fly for either Maryland or Alabama.
Then for our team, playing back-to-back games is a great challenge as well. But three in a row would be a little tough. I really like that day off. It will hopefully give our players a chance to rest and enjoy Puerto Rico, what it has to offer, come back and play the third game.
It's great to get this kind of competition early in the year. To have it in such a short period of time, it's a challenge, but something we're looking forward to.
TIM SIMMONS: Any player that stood out in practices that you weren't expecting?
COACH BOYLE: I don't know that I wasn't expecting. One of the players we have coming back is a kid named Andre Roberson, who led in blocked shots, steals and rebounding as a freshman. He did it coming off the bench, playing 22, 23 minutes a game. He had an unbelievable freshman year given those statistics and those circumstances. He's had a great off-season. He's a guy who has really worked on his game. He's going to really need to elevate his production level for us to be successful.
We have a transfer from Utah, Carlon Brown, who sat out last year, who has been practicing very well. Those two guys we're going to need to play well for us for us to be as good as we want to be in Puerto Rico. A lot of young guys need to step up as well.
I think Andre and Carlon are the two guys who stood out the most.
TIM SIMMONS: How is recruiting going for you this year so far?
COACH BOYLE: Couldn't be going better. We've got a lot of momentum with Colorado basketball right now. Coming off a 24-win season, the most wins in school history. We just opened up a two-court practice facility in Boulder. We have our facilities that got a shot in the arm with that. Then transferring leagues, going from the Big 12 to the PAC-12, has put us in a different territory recruiting-wise. We're kind of like the new kids on the block and people are checking us out.
A lot of different factors have gone into it. But recruiting has gone very, very well so far.
TIM SIMMONS: Questions for Coach Boyle.

Q. Do you have a feel for how Colorado will look different this year as opposed to last year losing so many important guys?
COACH BOYLE: Yeah, it's really hard to tell. That's what I mean when I say a lot of unknowns, unanswered questions for us. I don't know what this team is going to look like. I do know the two kids I mentioned, Andre and Carlon, are going to be key to us.
The 'X' factor is going to be how our new recruits step in and how quickly they acclimate to this level of basketball. Guys like Nate Tomlinson and Austin Dufault who are seniors who have been more like role players in their careers up to this point, now they have an opportunity to step into more prominent roles, more offensive scoring roles. That's going to be interesting to see how quickly that happens.
I don't know what our team's going to look like on November 11th much less down in Puerto Rico.
TIM SIMMONS: Coach, thank you very much. We'll see you in a couple weeks in Puerto Rico.
COACH BOYLE: We look forward to it. Take care.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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