The final piece for Colorado’s 2020–21 sea­son, when­ev­er it tips off, has final­ly arrived in Boulder.

This past week, Ger­man wing Tris­tan da Sil­va cleared the mounds of red tape nec­es­sary to get inter­na­tion­al recruits on cam­pus. Da Sil­va, the younger broth­er of Stan­ford star Oscar da Sil­va, still will have to wait for a full-fledged greet­ing with all his new team­mates, as he cur­rent­ly is under­go­ing a manda­to­ry quar­an­tine after trav­el­ing, yet his arrival at least relieves head coach Tad Boyle of one pan­dem­ic-relat­ed headache.

“He’s here. He’s in Bold­er and quar­an­ti­ning,” Boyle said. “He’s excit­ed to be here. We’re excit­ed to have him here. Can’t wait for him to get through all the pro­to­cols he has to get through to be cleared. But it’s been a long jour­ney for him and his fam­i­ly. I’ve talked about this a lot, but the men­tal health of the stu­dent-ath­letes is real. And to see his face and his smile and his reac­tion to arriv­ing in Boul­der is priceless.”

Bring­ing inter­na­tion­al recruits to Amer­i­ca always involves han­dling mounds of paper­work. Boyle admit­ted the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic mag­ni­fied that process some­what for the 6‑foot‑8 da Silva.

“It was more on the Ger­man side and the embassy there,” Boyle said. “It was a lit­tle bit cer­tain­ly with COVID and all the hoops these young men and women have to go through to get their I‑20s, get them stamped and approved in their coun­ty and get on a plane. There’s more hoops to jump through now than there was then, pre-COVID. I think that’s part of the relief as well for him. We’re glad to have him.”

Da Silva’s arrival com­pletes the Buffs’ impres­sive fresh­man class — which includes Col­orado natives Dominique Clif­ford and Luke O’Brien, in addi­tion to for­ward Jabari Walk­er — and adds anoth­er new face to a ros­ter full of new­com­ers. In addi­tion to the four fresh­men, the Buffs also have added grad­u­ate trans­fer Jeri­ah Horne and two new walk-ons in Col­oradoans Isaac Jes­sup and Owen Koonce. That list also can include point guard Kee­shawn Barthele­my, who red­shirt­ed last year as a true freshman.

Even in a nor­mal year, this par­tic­u­lar ros­ter make­up might cause Boyle to make some tough per­son­nel deci­sions in terms of pos­si­ble red­shirts. Giv­en that even in a best-case sce­nario, the pos­si­ble sea­son that won’t tip off until at least Jan. 1 is like­ly to fea­ture few­er games and a revamped post­sea­son, Boyle and his staff will have to weigh whether it will be worth sac­ri­fic­ing a sea­son of eli­gi­bil­i­ty for any of the rook­ies or even vet­er­ans who have yet to take red­shirt sea­sons, such as Eli Par­quet or D’Shawn Schwartz.

To be clear, Boyle did not dis­cuss any par­tic­u­lar play­ers or poten­tial sce­nar­ios. Yet he did admit the altered state of the sea­son could influ­ence his per­son­nel deci­sions in the months to come.

“I’ve thought about it,” Boyle said. “I’ve talked about it with my staff. Those deci­sions are off in the future. They’re cer­tain­ly not on the table right now. I’m the kind of coach that doesn’t make a deci­sion until I have to. The sit­u­a­tion is so flu­id. It can be so dif­fer­ent. I’m not going to make a deci­sion about that now.”