BOULDER — Who needs The Sphere in Vegas when you’ve got The Bub­ble in Boul­der? Every bas­ket­ball game for Tad Boyle’s Buffs feels as mas­sive as a U2 con­cert, at a frac­tion of the cost.

As KJ Simp­son, CU’s point guard and stealth All-Amer­i­can can­di­date got busy ham­mer­ing over­due nails into Cal’s gold­en cof­fin ear­ly Wednes­day night, I reached out to my old pal Jer­ry Palm. You prob­a­bly know him best as the ven­er­at­ed, long­time Brack­e­tol­o­gist at CBS Sports, the Carnac of col­lege hoops.

Did you see what the Buffs just did with­out Cody Williams? Did you catch The Tris­tan da Sil­va Show? How much have they got­ta do to get that Brack­etville tick­et punched now?

“They need to win them all in the reg­u­lar sea­son,” the Palm­ster wrote back. “And see what hap­pens in the con­fer­ence tournament.”

Buffs 88, Bears 78.

One down.

“Our mar­gin for error is behind us,” Boyle said when I asked about CU (19–9, 10–7 Pac-12) becom­ing the cen­ter of the Bub­ble Watch uni­verse. “Our mar­gin for error was in Berke­ley. And we tricked it off. Our mar­gin for error was in Tempe. We tricked it off. Our mar­gin for error was at Utah. We tricked it off. Our mar­gin for error was Flori­da State in November.

“If we don’t trick those games off, now we’re a team that has a mar­gin for error (as) we head down the stretch. But we’re not in that position.”

Boyle and Palm aren’t just singing from one hym­nal here. They’re onto the sec­ond verse, same as the first.

Tad’s seen this movie before. CU doesn’t stink. But the Pac-12 does, and every­body knows it.

The Buffs have three reg­u­lar-sea­son games left in the league that Leisure Lar­ry Scott destroyed, and only one of those — Stan­ford on Sun­day — is at the Events Cen­ter. They’re on their own, walk­ing the March Mad­ness fence with­out a safe­ty net. And pos­si­bly with­out Williams, the top‑5 NBA Draft prospect whose 13.7 points and 3.3 boards per game were miss­ing against Cal because of the freshman’s bum ankle.

“Now that thing’s wrapped, it’s braced,” Boyle said of the kid all the scouts come to see. “It’s not 100% … but it’s get­ting clos­er. And he had the same ankle injury last spring when he was prepar­ing for the NBA work­out, so it’s not some­thing new.”

Nor was see­ing the Buffs, short-hand­ed again, ask­ing oth­er guys to pull more of the rope. Minus Williams and guard Julian Ham­mond III (knee), CU opened the tilt on a 10–6 run that start­ed and end­ed with cen­ter Eddie Lamp­kin Jr. tak­ing care of busi­ness under the basket.

Luke O’Brien’s trey from the far right cor­ner extend­ed a surge — CU outscored Cal 15–3 — that pushed the hosts’ cush­ion to 33–19 with 6:09 until halftime.

“Obvi­ous­ly, a cou­ple guys down, we knew, as lead­ers, we want­ed to pick it up,” said Simp­son, the qui­et assas­sin who dropped 27 points, 18 in the sec­ond half, to keep the Bears at bay. “(And) exem­pli­fy out there on the court.”

A 14-point Buffs lead at the break got whit­tled to six ear­ly in the sec­ond half as Cal made 10 of its first 13 from the floor. But a Simp­son steal that led to a Javon Ruf­fin trey, his first since Jan. 20, gave the Buffs a 70–59 cush­ion with nine min­utes left on the evening, yank­ing momen­tum more or less for good.

“We knew they were going to make a run,” Simp­son said. “We just want­ed to keep play­ing, keep our com­po­sure … and we (were) able to do that.”

Good thing, too. Because, Cal, like the Car­di­nal on Sun­day, can only hurt the Buffs with the com­put­ers — not help them. Mark “Mad Dog” Madsen’s Bears turned up at the CEC ranked No. 115 in the NCAA’s NET rank­ing, the tour­ney selec­tion committee’s semi-offi­cial met­ric of choice.

Wins and loss­es are assigned to “quads” — Quad 1 moments are against like­ly tour­ney teams; Quad 4 are cup­cakes, etc. Cal’s a “Quad 3” game in Boul­der, win or lose — a shrug as a win, but a pro­to­type “bad” defeat if you hap­pen to slip up.

The Buffs have only played six Quad 1 games. They’ve lost five of them. Among Pow­er 5 schools in the NET top 40, only Wake For­est (2–4) went into the mid­week with as few Quad 1 games on their resume as CU’s. Every oth­er Pow­er 5 pro­gram with­in the NET top 40 had more than two Quad 1 wins in their respec­tive back pock­ets. Beat­ing Rich­mond (NET: 72) helped; beat­ing Mia­mi (NET: 89) hasn’t. Throw in down years for UCLA and USC, and no won­der Boyle’s mar­gin at the end of Feb­ru­ary feels thin­ner than the air on Mount Quandary.

Unlike their slump­ing baby bros up in FoCo, the Buffs can’t fold their arms, close their eyes, lean back, and rely on their zom­bie con­fer­ence to catch them on a “trust” fall. Even assum­ing the Fight­ing Tads some­how win out, nothing’s promised come Selec­tion Sun­day. Although if the com­mit­tee tru­ly cares about TV intrigue, they’ll stick the Buffs against Nebras­ka at Day­ton in one of those First Four games, light the fuse and laugh all the way to the bank.

CU entered the night ranked No. 32 in the NET and No. 31 in the KenPom.com com­put­er rank­ing. The lat­ter comes with a prece­dent as pret­ty as a sun­set at Chau­tauqua Park: Since 2014, only one eli­gi­ble Pow­er 5 team in a non-pan­dem­ic sea­son — Okla­homa in ’21–22 — fin­ished the sea­son among the KP top 32 and didn’t reach the Big Dance.

Even my man Jer­ry had the Buffs crash­ing the par­ty as of Wednes­day morn­ing — bare­ly.  The Palm­ster in his lat­est pro­jec­tion mocked the Buffs as one of his “Last 4 In,” an 11 seed in Day­ton against Ole Miss, with the win­ner draw­ing sixth-seed­ed BYU in the East.

“We all talk about it as a team,” Simp­son said of the NCAA con­jec­ture. “We’re not obliv­i­ous to it. We see it. It’s every­where. Social media is every­where. We’re bound to see it. But I think our main focus is under­stand­ing that we have to focus on the next oppo­nent — that’s our main pri­or­i­ty. And as long as we take care of it … things will take care of itself down the road.”

One down.

Three to go.

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