Junior guard Josh Fortune elevates towards the basket during the first half of play at the Coors Event Center. Fortune recorded 17 points against the Portland Pilots. Nov. 20, 2015 (Nigel Amstock/CU Independent)
Contact CU Independent Sports Staff Writer Alissa Noe at alissa.noe@colorado.edu and follow her on Twitter @crazysportgirl1.
Before transferring to Colorado over a year ago, redshirt junior guard Josh Fortune played a crucial role for the Providence Friars as he started all 35 games and averaged 8.4 points. This season, after just seven games, Fortune looks leaps and bounds better than he did when he first arrived in Boulder.
In the first half of non-conference play, Fortune is averaging 11.6 points and 5.3 rebounds per game. But that’s nowhere near the area that Josh has brought the best Fortune to this newly revamped Buffaloes team.
Safe to say his NCAA-regulated year off paid dividends.
On the season, Fortune has 19 assists to his name—tied for a team-high with sophomore point guard Dominique Collier—and is shooting an astonishing 15 of 32 from beyond the arc, roughly 47 percent.
Right now, he’s playing the best basketball of his young career.
“I’m certainly happy I made this transfer here,” Fortune said. “It’s a great system, great coaching staff, great teammates and I’m playing and winning games. I couldn’t be in a better place right now with, like I said, a great team.”
Head coach Tad Boyle’s old offensive system from the past couple seasons, Fortune said, was what ultimately convinced him to choose Colorado over Louisiana State and Valparaiso, who also had been recruiting him after he asked for his release from Providence.
“The system that they run offensively I feel like is good for guards and it gets the bigs involved a lot too, but the system is just really good for spreading the floor and attacking the rim,” Fortune said.
But a lot can change in one offseason for a team who struggled to produce on offense in seasons past. Over the past eight months, Boyle and his coaching staff have made the effort to spread the ball all over the floor, and not just in the paint as they did so much during the 2014-15 season. This year, with the reemergence of redshirts Fortune and sophomore George King, the Buffs have the firepower they need to drain shots from every area of the floor.
“We focus on getting the ball inside a lot and playing inside-out,” Fortune said of Boyle’s new system. “That just spreads the floor a little more for guards, for outside shooting and making threes and attacking the basket as well, so it’s good.”
But, with the ferocity that King has been playing with to date this season, Fortune has kind of been lost in the shuffle. What most people don’t know is that where King has improved on his shooting game, Fortune has improved on all areas of the floor.
“We’ve really challenged Josh,” Boyle said. “And I think—you know, everyone talks about George. Now, the one thing we don’t have is we don’t have the baseline with Josh Fortune that we have with George King, because we saw George King as a freshman in our program and we saw him sit out with growth and maturity.”
But Fortune’s maturity has grown since he first dawned the black and gold practice uni. He’s now better off the dribble and can help produce for his teammates before taking the shot himself, if need be.
“I think the game’s just slowed down a lot for me. I’m seeing things more clear and not rushing things on offense. It’s just slowed down since I’ve gotten mature,” Fortune said. “I think I’ve been more of a—being a redshirt junior, this is my fourth year in college so I’ve been playing for a long time. I know the college game pretty well.”
The change is something that Boyle has certainly noticed.
“He was pretty much a catch and shoot guy (at Providence), and now he can put the ball on the floor, making plays for other people,” Boyle said. “He’s a very good passer, has got a good feel for the game. So yeah, I think he’s again, like George, he’s had that year where he got to sit out and it was in a positive manner.”
In this spirit of unselfishness, Fortune said he has no aspirations for his own game this year. He simply wants to focus on making his team better.
“I don’t have any personal goals, just to keep winning with the team and going as far as we can,” he said.
If Fortune and the rest of the Buffaloes keep playing the way they have all season, that shouldn’t be all too hard.
