Colorado men’s basketball suffered its most lopsided loss of the 2025-26 season on Wednesday, Feb. 11, falling 78-44 at No. 16 Texas Tech.
The Buffaloes’ coach had another, more succinct way of describing what unfolded.
In his post-game news conference, longtime Colorado coach Tad Boyle said the 34-point drubbing was a “good, old-fashioned (expletive)-whoopin’” after his team fell to 4-8 in Big 12 play.
“There’s just no other way to say it,” Boyle said. “A lot of you guys are from West Texas. You probably know what that is. We took one tonight. Credit Texas Tech. They have a motto with their program that the toughest team wins. There wasn’t even a question who the tougher team was tonight.”
The Buffs shot a season-low 29.1% from the field, missing 39 of their 55 shots, and gave up 17 offensive rebounds, off of which Texas Tech got 21 second-chance points. Texas Tech All-American forward JT Toppin brutalized Colorado on the boards, grabbing 18 rebounds by himself.
It was the Buffs’ second loss this season to the Red Raiders, though the first came by only two points just 32 days earlier.
“I’m embarrassed by our performance,” Boyle said. “I’m embarrassed for our university. I’m embarrassed for the city of Boulder. I’m embarrassed for the state of Colorado. I’m embarrassed for every former player that’s worn this uniform. We’ve got to own this.”
Picked to finish 15th in the 16-team Big 12 in the league’s preseason poll, the Buffs got off to a 12-3 start this season, including a 2-0 mark in conference play. As they’ve gotten into the toughest part of their schedule, though, their fortunes have waned, with eight losses in their past 10 games. Four of those losses came against teams in the top 20 of the latest USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll.
Boyle is in his 16th season as Colorado’s coach and has fared well at a program where it’s difficult to win, especially in the revamped Big 12. He had led the Buffs to the NCAA Tournament in six of the past 14 seasons in which it was held. Just two years ago, Colorado won 26 games and made it to the second round of the tournament. His 326 victories at the school are the most in program history.
As he discussed his team’s woeful performance on Wednesday, Boyle harkened back to his days at Northern Colorado, where he was the head coach from 2007-10. He led a program that played in the Big Sky Conference and regularly took commercial flights that required the team to wake up at 5 a.m. the day after a game to board a plane, fly into Denver and then drive an hour to the school’s campus in Greeley, Colorado.
They’re the kind of travel headaches he wished his current team had to endure after its performance against Texas Tech.
“That’s what we deserve right now. We deserve to be on a 6 a.m. flight out of Lubbock — commercial, Southwest or whatever airline you choose,” Boyle said. “We don’t deserve a charter plane back to Boulder tonight. We got one. We paid for it, but we wasted our money. We wasted our university’s money and that’s on me. I’ll take the ownership of this because I’m the head coach. The buck stops with me. But I’m embarrassed. I’ve not said I’m embarrassed very often, but I’m embarrassed tonight.”
