An already undersized Colorado men’s basketball team will be without one of its most effective paint players the rest of the way.

On Saturday, head coach Tad Boyle confirmed the injury suffered by forward J’Vonne Hadley during Thursday night’s victory against California will be a season-ending setback, leaving the Buffaloes without their leading rebounder and third-leading scorer for the final seven games of the regular season, the Pac-12 Conference tournament, and any postseason bid they might be able to muster down the stretch.

Hadley suffered a right finger injury and exited the win against Cal just 2 minutes, 15 seconds after tipoff. Boyle, whose team hosts Stanford on Sunday afternoon, said the injury will require sur- gery.

Two players who aren’t traditional post players, graduate transfer Jalen Gabbidon and 6-foot-8 forward Luke O’Brien, will be leaned upon to help offset the loss of the 8.3 points and 6.1 rebounds Hadley was averaging prior to his injury.

“He’ll be out for the season,” Boyle said. “Luke O’Brien becomes really, really important. He’s played inside a little bit as well, at least defensively. The adjustments we have to make are more on defense than they are on offense. Where it really hurts us is our defense and rebounding, and our depth obviously. I’m more worried about the defense and rebounding taking a hit. I don’t think it will, as long as we stay out of foul trouble.”

Hadley has been a pleasant surprise this season out of Indian Hills Community College, scoring in double figures in five of his first nine games with the Buffs despite missing a pair of contests at the Myrtle Beach Invitational due to a shoulder injury. At 6-foot-6, Hadley struggled as the Buffs faced bigger frontcourts in Pac-12 play, as his averages in conference games prior to the injury had dipped to 7.3 points and 4.9 rebounds.

Hadley enjoyed a big night in his final full game, going 5-for-5 with 11 points and seven rebounds in last week’s loss at Oregon State. Thanks to the extra season of eligibility granted by the NCAA for the pandemic season of 2020-21, Hadley still has two seasons of eligibility remaining.

“We’re going to miss J’Vonne. A lot,” Gabbidon said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t succeed with the pieces we have. With me, my mentality is coming in and picking up some of the rebounding, crashing the glass hard, be a little scrappier inside, giving up some of the outside game to help the things that we lost. It will be a little bit of an adjustment playing a different style. But we’re ready to go.”

With Hadley out, O’Brien becomes the Buffs’ second-leading rebounder at 4.5 per game. Boyle admitted that O’Brien probably deserves a chance to start, given that his rebounding energy off the bench has been one of the few relatively consistent attributes for a Buffs team that has struggled through an inconsistent season. Yet with CU’s frontcourt rotation now reduced to O’Brien alongside starters Tristan da Silva and Lawson Lovering, juggling the minutes between that trio still works most efficiently with O’Brien coming off the bench. That means Gabbidon likely will get the first crack at the starting spot when the Buffs look to complete a regular season sweep of Stanford on Sunday.

“Luke deserves to start. Luke’s playing starter’s minutes and has the last couple games,” Boyle said. “It’s not that I don’t want to start Luke, but you have to have a rotation. If you start Luke and you start Tristan and you start Lawson, one of them needs a blow. It’s not to say the three of them won’t be together at some point. We’ve done that before and we can do that as the game goes on. But I think in terms of our substitution rotations initially, it makes the most sense to start a bigger wing.”