As the Col­orado Buf­faloes begin the first game week of a sea­son they hope will con­tin­ue to fea­ture con­tin­u­ous game weeks until March, the goal is sim­ple yet ten­u­ous. A bal­ance of antic­i­pa­tion and trep­i­da­tion that might also con­tin­ue through March.

CU men’s bas­ket­ball coach Tad Boyle talked on a video media ses­sion Mon­day morn­ing, rough­ly 56 hours before his squad is sched­uled to open the 2020–21 sea­son against South Dako­ta in Man­hat­tan, Kan.

Reach­ing that seem­ing­ly innocu­ous goal of get­ting to tipoff won’t be as easy as sim­ply check­ing the hours off the clock, as the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic already has made a mess of col­lege basketball’s sched­uled open­ing night Wednesday.

Boyle is cross­ing his fin­gers the Buffs, who haven’t suf­fered a sin­gle pos­i­tive test among its schol­ar­ship play­ers since the bulk of the team recon­vened on cam­pus in June, can pro­duce a safe and vic­to­ri­ous two-game, sea­son-open­ing trip to Kansas State.

“We have to get Wednes­day at 7 p.m. (6 MT) in Man­hat­tan, Kansas,” Boyle said. “If we can do that, it will be a hell of an accom­plish­ment for these young men. You look at what’s going on through our state, it’s anoth­er tes­ta­ment to our guys and, knock on wood, peo­ple keep stay­ing safe and healthy.”

On Fri­day, Col­orado State announced it is sus­pend­ing activ­i­ties for its men’s bas­ket­ball pro­gram through Dec. 2 due to pos­i­tive COVID-19 tests with­in the pro­gram, cast­ing at least a shad­ow of con­cern over the Rams’ sched­uled Dec. 8 vis­it to the CU Events Center.

On Mon­day, the hits kept com­ing. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver, coached by for­mer CU assis­tant Rod­ney Billups, announced the can­cel­la­tion of its sea­son-open­er Wednes­day against Col­orado Chris­t­ian due to pos­i­tive tests with­in the Pio­neers’ program.

No. 11 Ten­nessee, with for­mer CU assis­tant Kim Eng­lish on staff, sus­pend­ed all team activ­i­ties after head coach Rick Barnes test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. No. 9 Duke was forced to can­cel its open­er against Gardner-Webb.

The open­ing week sched­ule-jug­gling has struck the Pac-12, as well. Arizona’s open­er against North­ern Ari­zona was can­celed, as was No. 18 Ari­zona State’s high­ly-antic­i­pat­ed show­down against No. 2 Bay­lor in Con­necti­cut. Instead, the Sun Dev­ils will play Rhode Island.

Last week, the Pac-12 Con­fer­ence loos­ened its pre­vi­ous foot­ball restric­tions allow­ing for non­con­fer­ence matchups if games are can­celed. Bas­ket­ball has no such con­fer­ence-only man­date. Yet giv­en how Cal and UCLA were able to get paired in foot­ball at the 11th hour after their respec­tive foes were forced to can­cel, Boyle on Mon­day was asked if CU would have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to resched­ule games on the fly in case any of the foes dur­ing a Decem­ber run of four con­sec­u­tive home games — Wash­ing­ton State (Dec. 5), CSU (Dec. 8), North­ern Col­orado (Dec. 14), and Oma­ha (Dec. 16 ) — are forced to bow out.

Boyle indi­cat­ed those con­ver­sa­tions already are happening.

“That’s the mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion,” Boyle said. “We’re cer­tain­ly try­ing. We want those con­tin­gency plans in place. You have to stay nim­ble this year. I’ve had con­ver­sa­tions with Jeff Lin­der at Wyoming. I talked to (CSU coach) Niko (Medved) after I saw what hap­pened with the Col­orado State pro­gram. We’ll be in con­stant con­tact between now and Decem­ber the 8th. We’re hope­ful that game can still go on. If not, Rod­ney Billups at DU, I know they’re on pause right now, but I’ve had con­ver­sa­tions obvi­ous­ly with him. Joe Scott at Air Force. All the peo­ple along the Front Range we have been in con­tact with and we’re cer­tain­ly open to that (resched­ul­ing) sce­nario if in fact we lose games. And we very well may.

“We’re going to stay nim­ble and try to get in as many games as we can.”