Higgens, CoryDenver Nuggets star point guard Chauncey Billups corrected the team’s course when he came back to Denver from Detroit early last season, leading the Nuggets to the brink of the NBA Finals. He remains perhaps the key player on the squad, a virtual coach on the floor every night, pulling the strings.

Billups will no doubt be revered in this town for years after he retires and remembered for many things, but he’s lost his spot as the 23rd all-time leading scorer for the University of Colorado basketball team.

That honor now belongs to Cory Higgins, a bright spot on the Buffs’ men’s team who has started all 75 games in his CU career, according to The Colorado Daily. Higgins, 12 games into his junior year, has now scored 1,038 career points, 18 more than Billups scored in his two years at CU (1995-97).

Higgins is one of the reasons the Buffs are 7-0 at home so far this season. But the Buffs play in a tough Big 12 conference that is loaded with talent on the hardwood. At 8-4, they’re tied for last place in the conference with Oklahoma (via Big 12 Sports). They remain four games behind the undefeated universities of Kansas and Texas. The good news is that the Buffs haven’t yet started conference play, so there may be room to inch up in the standings.

Coach Jeff Bzdelik says part of the problem is the players need to do a better job of submitting to what’s good for the team–and stop listening to their families and high school coaches, who are telling them they should have more minutes (via the Daily Camera).

The team’s most recent game, a 70-59 win over Yale Tuesday night, featured only what Bzdelik felt was the most athletic lineup, and several players rode the bench the entire game. That’s just how it’s going to be, Bzdelik says, implying that if the players don’t like it, they should hit the road.

Photo courtesy of CUBuffs.com.