When he was a freshman in high school, Bangot Dak says he stood about 6-feet tall.

Above the curve, certainly, but nothing that might portend the 6-foot-11 frame Dak eventually brought to the University of Colorado.

To that point, Dak’s youth basketball career was spent as a guard with slick ball-handling skills. Then came the growth spurts. By the start of his sophomore year he had grown to about 6-foot-3. Accompanied by the requisite growing pains in his knees, Dak soon shot up to 6-9.

Along the way, however, Dak never lost those ball-handling skills, which have been on display as CU men’s basketball Tad Boyle has called Dak’s number a little more frequently of late. The rookie from Lincoln, Neb., has yet to play a minute away from home, but that could change as soon as Sunday when the Buffaloes take on No. 15 Miami at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. (noon MT, ESPN2).

“It just gives me more confidence to go out there and do what I normally want to do,” Dak said. “When I was younger, I just wanted to play guard. Everybody wanted to be a guard. But then I just started growing and all that and I turned into a big. All I did was play around guards, and I had to play around quicker people all the time. That’s just something I’ve always had to my game.”

That game was on display during Sunday’s win against Pepperdine, as Dak played a season-most 11 minutes, 50 seconds before finishing with four points, one assist and a highlight-reel blocked shot. Although Dak didn’t play in last week’s loss at Colorado State, he turned in an impressive six-minute stint in the previous home game against Iona, going 2-for-4 with five points, three rebounds and one assist.

With guard RJ Smith sidelined indefinitely by a lower leg problem, Boyle mentioned Dak as one of several players next in line to fill Smith’s 11.8 minutes per game. Dak probably still won’t see major minutes, but given he was considered a potential redshirt candidate as a late signee last spring, Dak’s swift ascension has been one of the early bright spots among CU’s reserves.

“I think I’m way better than (the start of the preseason). I feel like I know all the concepts better right now,” Dak said. “My teammates trust me more. Coming in, they didn’t know me like that, and now they know my game as well. Now that they play with me a lot, they’ve seen I can come out here and hoop, so they trust me a lot more.”

One interesting early wrinkle to CU’s rotation has been Boyle’s willingness to play Dak alongside 6-foot-8 Assane Diop, also a freshman forward. Boyle reiterated a point this week that he first made during the preseason regarding the team’s new five-out approach on offense in that it was a move made as much for this season as the future with versatile bigs like Diop and Dak on the mix.

“As I look at the future of this program down the road, those guys are going to play a lot together,” Boyle said. “So they have to learn how to play together. They do it in practice every day. Assane can step out and shoot the three. So can BD. They can both post-up. They can both screen-and-roll. They’re very versatile and they complement each other very well. I think BD has really rebounded the ball well in the few minutes he’s played.”