CU must watch and wait
Hosting NCAA Tourney games now up in the air
LAS VEGAS >> Following a heartbreaking, double-overtime loss to Oregon State in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament on Thursday, the Colorado women’s basketball team now turns its focus to March Madness.
As head coach JR Payne noted in the postgame press conference, “It’s pretty easy to turn the page when you’re going to the NCAA Tournament.”
There is no doubt that the 18thranked Buffaloes (22-9) will be among the 68 teams announced for the field on Selection Sunday, March 17. However, the 8579 loss to No. 13 Oregon State — along with a series of losses down the stretch — will have the Buffs sweating out their position in the bracket.
The top 16 teams — four in each region — earn the right to play at home and host the first two rounds of the tournament. For most of the season, the Buffs had been a virtual lock to be among that group. In fact, when the NCAA committee did its first top-16 reveal on Feb. 15, CU was a No. 1 seed (No. 4 overall). Plenty has changed since then. CU was coming off a six-point loss at then-no. 25 Oregon State but sat at 20-4 when it was tabbed a No. 1 seed on Feb. 15. Then, the Buffs lost three consecutive road games and although they were close losses to ranked teams, it extended the losing streak to four.
The NCAA committee dropped the Buffs to a No. 4 seed (No. 13 overall) in its second top-16 reveal on Feb. 29.
Since then, the Buffs are just 2-2, with the only wins against two of the three worst teams in the Pac-12 (Washington and Oregon). A home loss to Washington State in the regular season finale last Saturday and Thursday’s loss to Oregon State have further clouded CU’S chances to host.
The NCAA committee has been doing top-16 reveals since 2017 and no team projected as a No. 1 seed has ever fallen out of hosting position. CU could be the first.
ESPN bracket expert Charlie Creme had the Buffs as a No. 5 seed in his latest projections on Friday, traveling to South Bend, Ind. It’s the first time this year he’s had the Buffs going on the road to open the tournament.
“There’s nothing we can do to impact anything at this point,”
said Payne, whose team won’t play again until the first round of the tournament. “So the best thing that we can do is make sure we’re ready for whatever comes.”
In CU’S favor is that it played one of the toughest schedules in the country and that it sits at No. 14 in the NET rankings, a tool used by the committee to seed the field.
The Buffs have played 12 top-25 teams. Outside of the Pac-12, the only team in the country that’s played that many is Virginia, which isn’t tournament-bound. CU is the only team in the country that twice faced top-25 teams in four consecutive games. Only five other tournament contenders had even one of those stretches.
The Pac-12 is also the only major conference that scheduled any of its teams to play four consecutive road games, giving that assignment to Arizona, Arizona State, CU and Utah. CU and Utah also had three-game road trips. Outside of the Pac-12, only two major conference teams had even one threegame road swing: Iowa State and Maryland.
Also in CU’S favor is impressive wins against defending champion and current-no. 8 LSU, No. 2 Stanford and No. 5 USC. The Buffs are the only team this season to beat an opponent ranked No. 1 (LSU, in the season opener).
Unfortunately for CU, that 2-6 finish looms large. So does its current six-game losing streak to teams among the top 30 in the NET rankings.
Several others teams projected by Creme in the four-to-six range for NCAA seeding — Gonzaga, Indiana, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Baylor, Kansas State and Creighton — are all still playing, with opportunities to strengthen (or weaken) their arguments for hosting spots.
Notre Dame, for example, wasn’t among the top 16 in either of the committee’s reveals, but the 14thranked Fighting Irish are 3-0 with three top-25 wins since the Feb. 29 reveal. They face No. 11 Virginia Tech in the ACC semifinals on Saturday but may have already locked up one of the coveted hosting spots. CU just has to wait. “I don’t know exactly where we sit,” she said, “but we’ve played one of the toughest schedules in the country and been competitive in every single game we’ve played. So I definitely think that we should be hosting. I’m certainly hoping that we’ll be hosting and we will be anxiously awaiting and training until our number is called.”