Tad Boyle grateful for staff stability in Year 13 leading Colorado men's basketball

Oct. 5—Year 13 of the Tad Boyle era for the Colorado men's basketball team boasts a familiarity well beyond the head coach.

As CU hosted its annual basketball media day on Wednesday at the Events Center, it was a veteran crew leading the Buffs through their workout on the court.

Associate head coach Mike Rohn and assistants Bill Grier and Rick Ray are entering their third consecutive season together at CU. That still is not quite the longest-tenured staff during Boyle's stint in Boulder. But given the quartet of coaches has remained intact amid an unprecedented era of change in the college game, the stability has allowed the CU program to adapt on the fly while remaining competitive in the Pac-12.

"My staff does not get enough credit in terms of how hard they work on the recruiting trail, what kind of development coaches they are, what kind of scouting coaches they are," Boyle said. "I've got a great coaching staff. Not good, great. People need to understand that. And stability is important. It's important to the players. It's important to us as a staff. You're not each year teaching somebody new. I've got a lot of confidence in these guys.

"Stability is one of those things as you look around the country, the successful programs — whether they're basketball programs or football programs — they've got a certain amount of stability. If I hire a good guy and people come after him, that's a good thing in some respects. But it's not good in terms of stability."

Earlier in Boyle's tenure, the trio of Rohn, Jean Prioleau and Rodney Billups was intact for four consecutive seasons, between 2012-13 and 2015-16. The Buffs reached three NCAA Tournaments during that span, all first round exits, but also endured one of the more disappointing campaigns of Boyle's tenure in 2014-15.

The next four years featured frequent staff shuffling. Billups left for the head coach job at his alma mater Denver after the 2015-16 season and was replaced by Grier. A year later, Prioleau took the head coach job at San Jose State and was replaced by Kim English.

The trio of Rohn, Grier and English was intact for two seasons before English took an assistant spot at Tennessee (he now is the head coach at George Mason). English was replaced by Anthony Coleman, who returned to Arizona State after just one season at CU. Coleman was then replaced by Ray, formerly a head coach at Mississippi State and Southeast Missouri State.

Ray arrived amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was a struggle for the team to get together to work out and the staff was unable to travel for recruiting. Still, CU's staff finalized a 2021 recruiting class ranked as the best in program history. And the group has adjusted smoothly to using the transfer portal to fill key spots on the roster, as they did with Jeriah Horne for the 2020-21 NCAA Tournament team and again this year with Ivy League graduate transfers Jalen Gabbidon and Ethan Wright.

"The great thing is coach (Boyle) knows exactly what we're looking for in the process," Rohn said. "So we can identify what player who, number one, fit and number two, that we can get. Because that's important too. You can spin your wheels recruiting a lot, but you may not be able to get some guys. You always want to stretch yourself a bit and get the best players possible. But identifying the right fit has been critical.

"The transfer thing, everybody has had to adjust to that. For us, we're not going to do a whole team like that. We're going to try to put pieces into the puzzle that we need. I think coach referred to it as more of a Band-Aid type thing. Because for us, continuity is really important. The guys in the program that get better and come back year after year, that's the foundation."