With an extremely young team on the cusp of starting preseason practice, the Colorado men\u2019s basketball team will soon welcome even more young talent to the mix.<\/p>\n
On Sunday night, head coach Tad Boyle and the Buffaloes received a verbal commitment from Rider Portela, a 6-foot-6 small forward from Phoenix. Portela is CU\u2019s first commitment for the 2026 class.<\/p>\n
Portela is listed as a four-star prospect by 247Sports, which ranks Portela as the No. 45 small forward recruit in the nation and the No. 10 prospect in Arizona. Per 247Sports, Portela also received offers from California, Fresno State, Grand Canyon and Long Beach State.<\/p>\n
Boyle has over-signed in recent years due to what has become an expected spring exodus to the transfer portal, but the Buffs have just one player whose eligibility is set to expire following the upcoming season \u2014 sixth-year center Elijah Malone.<\/p>\n
The Buffs are tentatively slated to open preseason practice on Sept. 24 with a seven-player freshman class that includes two other recruits who were club teammates in the Phoenix area, guard Jalin Holland and forward Fawaz \u201cTacko\u201d Ifaola.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: September 15, 2025 at 11:54 AM MDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With an extremely young team on the cusp of starting preseason practice, the Colorado men\u2019s basketball team will…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":229625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,4437,4438,1369,4439,9577,4440,38888,1370,728,38889,1317,1337,1338,50,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-229624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boulder","10":"tag-boulder-county","11":"tag-college-sports","12":"tag-colorado","13":"tag-colorado-news","14":"tag-front-range","15":"tag-lafayette","16":"tag-latest-headlines","17":"tag-local-news","18":"tag-longmont","19":"tag-ncaa","20":"tag-ncaa-basketball","21":"tag-ncaabasketball","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115210290713050641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}