Any preseason projection that saw the Colorado men’s basketball team make any sort of push for a postseason berth would require a career-best-type season from senior guard Julian Hammond III.

So far, Hammond is more than doing his part.

Although the Buffaloes opened Big 12 Conference play on Monday with a 79-69 loss against No. 3 Iowa State, it was Hammond who set an early tone for CU before compiling yet another stellar all-around game.

It continued an early hot streak for Hammond he will look to keep going when the Buffs play their first true road game of the season on Saturday at Arizona State (4 p.m., ESPN+).

“I’ve been here before. I’ve played against teams like this. I’ve played in games like this,” Hammond said. “You need somebody to kind of step up and I feel like being a senior guard, I’ve been here, I feel like I should step in that role.”

Hammond shot the Buffs into a 5-0 lead out of the gate and also played a key role in a 22-5 CU run in the second half that turned a 12-point deficit into a five-point lead, hitting a 3-pointer and dishing out an assist as the Buffs attempted an upset bid.

That bid fell short, but Hammond continued to ease the loss of last year’s standout point guard, KJ Simpson, to the NBA.

Hammond finished 9-for-17 with 21 points, posting the fourth 20-point game of his career. Three of those 20-point games have occurred over the past six games. After struggling with turnovers in the early portion of the season — Hammond averaged 2.9 per game through the first eight games — the senior guard has reined in the miscues. Hammond hasn’t committed more than one turnover in any of the past four games, and in a contest against Iowa State in which the Buffs finished with 19 turnovers, none of them were committed by Hammond during his 34 minutes, 11 seconds of court time.

Over the past three games, Hammond has recorded 16 assists against only two turnovers, improving his season assist-to-turnover rate to 1.65 (43 assists, 26 turnovers). The Cherry Creek graduate also is setting a torrid pace from the 3-point arc, as he will take a .429 3-point percentage (24-for-56) into Saturday’s contest at ASU.

Hammond didn’t simply pad those shooting numbers against the ho-hum nonconference foes the Buffs faced at home. Against Iowa State and in the three games CU played at the Maui Invitational — against Michigan State, UConn and ISU — Hammond went 12-for-24 from the arc.

“We need Julian to be who he is,” CU head coach Tad Boyle said. “I said this before the season — we don’t need him to be KJ Simpson, we don’t need him to be anybody that he’s not. We just need him to be the best version of Julian Hammond he can be. And I thought he was great (against Iowa State) in terms of his aggressiveness. I thought a couple of those shots were a little quick without paint touches, but Julian’s shooting the ball well. His percentages are really high, so sometimes you’ve got to live with that.

“He’s got to learn when to take that stuff, when not to take it. But 9-for-17 from a guard? That’s not bad. We’ll live with that. Offensively, he’s not scared. He’s playing with confidence. That’s what we need. We need more guys like that that are willing to finish and make plays. Julian was great, I thought.”