At 6-foot-11, Sebastian Rancik owned the distinction of being one of Colorado\u2019s tallest players last year.<\/p>\n
This season, he\u2019s just one of the Buffaloes\u2019 plentiful trees.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say Rancik will be lost in the crowd. Quite the contrary. Back for his sophomore season after a rookie campaign full of promise, as well as the typical first-year ups and downs, is arguably the most versatile of the Buffs\u2019 suddenly abundant big men.<\/p>\n
\u201cStrength is always a thing that I need to improve on. And then I knew this year I would play with the ball in my hands a lot, so ball-handling was a focal point of the offseason,\u201d Rancik said. \u201cAnd then I\u2019m working on my shot every day, perfecting my shot. Pretty much the whole package, but I really locked into ball-handling and my shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Retaining Rancik was critical for the Buffs, who welcome back just five scholarship players in Rancik, Bangot Dak, Elijah Malone, Felix Kossaras and Andrew Crawford, who redshirted last year.<\/p>\n
When the spring roster shuffling was complete, Rancik appeared to once again be on track to be one of the bigger Buffs. But with the summer acquisition of 7-foot-1 Leonardo Van Elswyk and 6-foot-9 Alon Michaeli, CU fortified its bulk up front to combine with Rancik, 7-foot freshman Tacko Ifaola and Dak, who was listed at 6-foot-11 last year but is at 7-foot this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d like to think theoretically that size would help you with rebounding. What I\u2019ve found out is size is not always the most important thing,\u201d CU head coach Tad Boyle said. \u201cIt\u2019s aggressiveness. It\u2019s toughness. It\u2019s going and getting the ball. Just go get it. You don\u2019t have to have size to be a great rebounder. Certainly if you have it, it should give you an advantage. But that\u2019s not always the way it works. So we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among that array of big men, Rancik is the best ball-handler and has the potential to be the top 3-point shooter, although he finished with just a .258 mark from long range last year. Overall, though, it was a solid debut season for Rancik, who took over a starting role early in Big 12 play and finished the year averaging 5.9 points and 2.8 rebounds with a .425 field goal percentage. He made a telling statement at Kansas with his best game of the season<\/a>, posting season-highs of 19 points and nine rebounds.<\/p>\n Watching Rancik develop provided a small silver lining during a 14-21 campaign that was just the eighth 20-loss season in program history. This year, though, Rancik will be counted upon for much more production, and the reinforcements up front will free Rancik from the paint to put his myriad skills to work.<\/p>\n As a freshman, there was little to no pressure on Rancik\u2019s shoulders to produce. With the Nov. 3 season opener against Montana State still more than a month away, Rancik says he is embracing the challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no pressure. I\u2019ve worked for this since I was seven years old,\u201d Rancik said. \u201cThe expectations and what coach expects from me is something I love. I\u2019m grateful to coach that he puts me in that position and I\u2019m really looking forward to the year, because this is what I\u2019ve worked for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 6-foot-11, Sebastian Rancik owned the distinction of being one of Colorado\u2019s tallest players last year. This season,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":260058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,4437,4438,4441,1369,2076,4436,4439,9577,4440,1370,728,1317,1337,1338,50,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-260057","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-buffzone","12":"tag-college-sports","13":"tag-college-basketball","14":"tag-college-menu2019s-basketball","15":"tag-colorado","16":"tag-colorado-news","17":"tag-front-range","18":"tag-latest-headlines","19":"tag-local-news","20":"tag-ncaa","21":"tag-ncaa-basketball","22":"tag-ncaabasketball","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115279190016624509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260057","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=260057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}