Five years before becoming Celtics teammates, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard squared off in a Pac-12 basketball game at the University of Colorado.

It was a memorable night for White for two reasons.

First, it was the biggest win of the 2016-17 season for a middling Colorado squad. Pritchard’s team, Oregon, came in with a 19-2 record and went on to make the Final Four.

It also was the game that proved to White, who played his first three collegiate seasons at Division-II Colorado-Colorado Springs, that he could compete with the best in the country. He scored a game-high 23 points and added five rebounds, four assists, four steals and a block as the Buffaloes won 74-65.

White and Pritchard reflected on the January 2017 matchup during a recent appearance on the “Young Man and the Three” podcast.

“Probably that Oregon game (was when my confidence clicked), honestly,” White said. “… I had a good game against Xavier early in the year, but they were still kind of trying to figure out my position on the team. But then I had a good game against Oregon, and then from that moment on, I felt like I was the guy on the team and they kind of ran the offense through me. Also just being a team that was so talented like they were and just proving to myself and to everybody that I could play and could play at that level.

“So that was probably the uptick of my season, and then I had a really good last three or four games of the season. My stock was rising at the right time.”

Pritchard, a freshman at the time, said he’d heard about White’s talent while playing for the U.S. national youth teams, which train in Colorado Springs.

“We knew he was a good player,” Pritchard said on the podcast. “… I remember seeing him one time, and the coaches were talking. At the time, he was only a D-II player, and they were like, ‘Oh, this kid’s really good.’ But at the time, you don’t really take it serious or anything. And then he goes to Colorado, and look at him now.”

Against Oregon, White was “unstoppable,” Pritchard said. He went 3-for-4 from 3-point range and scored 17 of his 23 points in the second half.

Pritchard also had one of the most productive games of his freshman season that night. Typically a facilitator on a Ducks team that featured five future NBA players, including current Houston Rockets guard Dillon Brooks, Pritchard led Oregon with 19 points against White and Co., making a season-high five 3-pointers on nine attempts.

“I probably was not high on the scouting report,” Pritchard said. “I was more of a ‘run the play.’ A lot of those guys didn’t like me taking shots.”

White entered the NBA draft the following offseason and went through “15 or 16” pre-draft workouts. He said he “was not good at all” when he worked out for the Spurs, and that San Antonio canceled a second workout it had scheduled for him. Despite what he thought was a poor first impression, the Spurs drafted White with the 29th pick, and he went on to start 155 games for Gregg Popovich’s squad before being traded to Boston in 2022.

Pritchard went three spots earlier when he entered the NBA in 2020, but he believes he “definitely would have gotten drafted higher” had the pandemic not wiped out his senior-year NCAA tournament. He averaged 20.5 points and 5.5 assists per game in 2019-20 and was a consensus first-team All-American.

“The way I was playing, I was ready for that moment, and that can boost your stock right there, just having good performances and leading your team,” Pritchard said on the podcast. “And then I definitely wasn’t going to duck smoke in pre-draft workouts. I was going to want to go. But I didn’t get to. I only did two individual workouts that whole time, and it was Toronto and Detroit; they came to LA. So I just didn’t get that opportunity. But I think it still worked out.”

Pritchard said he was surprised to land with the Celtics because they already were “guard-heavy” and had just drafted two point guards a year earlier.

“And then I didn’t even work out for them or anything,” he said. “And then randomly, 26th pick came, my agent called and said I’m getting picked, and I’m like, it’s crazy.”

After struggling to find a consistent role for his first three pro seasons, Pritchard became a core rotation player during Boston’s run to the NBA title last year and now is putting up career numbers as the early front-runner for Sixth Man of the Year. He and White, who signed a four-year, $125.9 million contract extension in July, both entered Thursday ranked in the top 10 in the league in 3-pointers made this season.