HITTING THE ROAD
Buffs don’t get host bid, land No. 5 seed for NCAA Tournament
There was, of course, hope that the Colorado women’s basketball team had done enough to earn the right to host games in the NCAA Tournament.
The tournament selection committee didn’t view the Buffaloes as one of the top 16 teams, but CU put that disappointment aside to celebrate the fact that there’s more basketball in front of them.
On Sunday, the 68-team NCAA Tournament field was announced with the 18th-ranked Buffaloes landing the No. 5 seed in the Albany 2 Regional. They’ll face 12th-seeded Drake on Friday (5 p.m., ESPNNEWS) in Manhattan, Kan. Fourthseeded and 16th-ranked Kansas State will host the sub-region and face 13th-seeded Portland on Friday. The winners will meet in the second round on Sunday. Game times have not been announced.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed,” CU head coach JR Payne said about not hosting. “Certainly, we were hoping to host, but it’s fine. We’ve gone on the road and won and we know that we played a really, really tough schedule. We played really tough teams on the road, in tough environments with 10,000 people and so it won’t be anything new. Sure, it makes it a little bit harder, but that’s OK. We’re OK with hard.”
CU (22-9) will face a Drake team that won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season and tournament titles. The Bulldogs (29-5) are in the tournament for the second year in a row.
“Any team that’s won 29 games is pretty darn good,” Payne said.
Projected as a No. 4 seed by pundits going into Sunday, the Buffs couldn’t overcome their disappointing finish in the eyes
of the selection committee. CU went 2-6 in its last eight games, including an 85-79 double-overtime loss to No. 12 Oregon State in the Pac-12 quarterfinals on March 7.
CU was projected as a No. 1 seed by the selection committee in its first top16 reveal on Feb. 15. In the eight years the committee has done top 16 reveals, CU is the first team to be a projected No. 1 and finish outside of the top 16.
Despite that, the Buffs are in the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive season, something the program hasn’t done since a four-year run from 2001-04. And, the Buffs have improved their seed each of the past three seasons. They were a No. 7 in 2022 and a No. 6 last year.
“I mean, you have to (put disappointment aside),” senior point guard Jaylyn Sherrod said. “What is complaining about it going to do for us? Nothing at all. At the end of the day, we deserve what we got and if we would have did things a little bit differently at some point in the season, maybe that wouldn’t have been outcome. But we’ve got to just roll with what we’ve got right now. We’re in the tournament, at the end of the day.”
It wasn’t long ago that simply getting to the tournament was difficult for CU. In 2022, the Buffs snapped a nine-year tournament drought. So, even with the missed opportunity of hosting games, Payne said the Buffs don’t take for granted what it means to be in this position.
“So many of us have been here a long time and really been a part of building our program to where we had the expectation to play in March,” Payne said. “I think that, in and of itself, is an incredible thing, an incredible testament to just the amount of work and effort that’s been poured in from players, to staff to coaches, to everybody involved.”
Ranked among the top 10 in the Associated Press poll most of the year, the Buffs’ six late-season losses came by an average of 6.0 points per game — and five came against top 25 teams. They that had they turned even one of those around, they might have been playing in Boulder this week, but they also have had time to process what went right and wrong throughout the season and accept whatever was going to come their way.
“Of course you would want to host,” senior Frida Formann said, “but we’re in and we know we’re playing and I’m really excited to just get started. It gives just a little extra boost to show what you can do. Just super excited to know where we’re going.
“We’re a five seed; we’ve had a great season. I think we’re prepared for any challenge that comes our way. We’re just really excited for going to Manhattan.”