Asked following his team’s latest setback if he has ever experienced a season as challenging and frustrating as this one, Tad Boyle had to stretch back through his memories.

The year was 2006, four years before he would take over the men’s program at the University of Colorado.

As a rookie head coach at Northern Colorado, Boyle’s Bears went 4-24, with a 2-14 mark as newcomers in the Big Sky Conference.

Right now, collecting two Big 12 wins feels like a Herculean chore for the Buffaloes.

Saturday’s 78-63 defeat at Arizona continued the CU program’s worst run of futility in decades. The Buffs are 0-8 in the Big 12, surpassing the 2016-17 team’s 0-7 Pac-12 run as the worst conference start in 15 seasons under Boyle. It is the program’s worst winless run to open league play since going 0-8 to start the Big Eight schedule in 1992-93.

The eight consecutive defeats marks the longest losing streak of the Boyle era and the longest for the program since the Buffs lost the final 12 games of the 2008-09 season.

“We won four games (at UNC). At least we won nine in the (nonconference) here,” Boyle said. “We were not a good basketball team, for different reasons. Some of the reasons were the same, but we were really young. Believe it or not, we’re not a real young team. We only played one freshman (at Arizona). Now, we’re an inexperienced team. Even our grad transfers (Trevor Baskin and Elijah Malone) never played in a building like (Arizona). In Maui we had a small, cracker box gym where it was pretty enthusiastic. But in terms of road venues, this was the first time they’ve seen something like this. I think that showed in the second half.

“I’ve been through this before, but I don’t think many of our players have. As a coach, it doesn’t matter if you’re winning. It doesn’t matter if you’re losing. Your challenge is the same. You want your team to improve. Hopefully day-to-day. Certainly week-to-week and month-to-month. The frustrating thing for me is we’re not a better team today than we were in the middle of December. That’s on me.”

Even if the Buffs manage to eventually clear the rather modest hurdle of week-to-week improvement, the upcoming schedule won’t help them finally crack the win column.

CU’s next chance at victory arrives on Tuesday at home against Arizona State (7 p.m., ESPN+), a club that defeated the Buffs by 20 points in Tempe three weeks ago. After that, CU has two consecutive road games (TCU, Utah) before a run in which it faces four of the nation’s top 12 teams in a span of six games — Houston, at Kansas, at Iowa State and again against KU.

“We know we can compete with anybody, because we do it every game for stretches,” CU senior guard Julian Hammond III said. “But we just need to put it together for a full 40 minutes. That’s been our problem this year. We’re always in these games and teams break it open. We need to figure out what needs to happen when those runs do happen. Instead of a 10-point run, maybe it’s a six-point run. A 12-point (deficit) on the road, it’s tough to come back from that.”