Everything You Need to Know About March Madness In Colorado

Some would say it’s a stretch to label Colorado the epicenter of college basketball, but, well, we’re believers. With the Buffs falling just one game short of the Pac-12 title, the women from Boulder sitting pretty with a 22-9 record going into tourney play, and the men’s Colorado State team nosing into the Dance, it has been an extraordinarily strong season for teams scattered across the Centennial State. There are also high hopes out of Denver, a stud from Thornton, and more.

With NCAA Tournament games kicking off on Tuesday, brackets filled out nationally in offices and among groups of friends will have a heavy Colorado presence. The University of Colorado Boulder women’s basketball makes its third-consecutive tournament appearance under coach JR Payne, who has guided the Buffaloes to 69 wins during that stretch. Their male counterparts surged at the right time, too, with one of their most talented rosters in recent memory. And, things are looking up in Fort Collins, too: The Colorado State men’s team will return to the 68-team tournament field after piecing together 24 wins in the brutally competitive (and endlessly entertaining) Mountain West Conference this season.

The Colorado connections aren’t just limited to the programs playing within the state’s square borders. Tennessee star guard Dalton Knecht, a likely first-team all-American and one of the frontrunners for various national player of the year awards, is a Thornton native who played two seasons at Northern Colorado before transferring to the Volunteers last year. He has been a revelation there, averaging a Southeastern Conference–best 21.1 points per game for a top-five team.

And the captivating storylines extend beyond teams bound for March Madness. Tommy Bruner of the University of Denver was the Division I scoring leader at the end of the regular season, averaging 24.5 points per game before he led the Pioneers to the Summit League Tournament championship game, where they fell just shy of their first NCAA Tournament appearance in program history in a 76-68 loss to South Dakota State last week. Colorado State women’s basketball guard McKenna Hofschild, the shortest player on her team at 5-foot-2, finished as the ninth-best scorer in Division I this season, averaging 22.1 points per game.

As college basketball takes its annual—albeit brief—place atop the American sports food chain, let’s take a closer look at the various Colorado teams playing in the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments and what the next few weeks might have in store.

University of Colorado Buffaloes Women

• The ceiling: Final Four
• The floor: First round
• Player to keep an eye on: Senior guard Jaylyn Sherrod

The Buffs started their 2023–’24 campaign as emphatically as they could have, beating Angel Reese and reigning national champion Louisiana State University by 14 in the season-opener. From there, they spent much of the season in the top 10 of the national polls, rising as high as number three, though they endured some late-season stumbles, losing five of their last seven games heading into the NCAA Tournament.

A national power under coach Ceal Barry in the 1990s and early 2000s, Colorado had made the tournament just twice in an 18-year stretch prior to last season, when it made it to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 20 years. Many of the key pieces from that team returned for another run in 2024. Jaylyn Sherrod is a dynamic, grizzled guard who is a proven playmaker offensively and a tenacious, unrelenting presence on the defensive end. Center Aaronette Vonleh leads the team in scoring at 14.1 points per game. Guard Frida Formann is one of the top outside shooters in the sport, making 42.7 percent of her three-point attempts this season.

The Buffs’ recent skid has relegated them to a number-five seed in the tournament, leaving them liable to a stiff challenge in the first round—against 12-seed Drake. Given its experience, continuity, and talent, this is a team that has some of the requisite ingredients to make a Final Four run. To get there, though, it will likely have to knock off one of the nation’s top teams along the way. Should they make it back to the Sweet 16, they’ll likely square off against Caitlin Clark and Iowa.

Colorado State University Rams Men

• The ceiling: Second round
• The floor: Play-in game
• Player to keep an eye on: Senior guard Isaiah Stevens

The Rams came sprinting out of the gate this season, ripping off 13 wins in their first 14 games and climbing all the way to number 13 in the Associated Press poll, the highest mark in program history. Though it suffered its share of lumps in conference play, coach Niko Medved’s team is set to compete in its second NCAA Tournament in the past three years.

Guard Isaiah Stevens bypassed the NBA Draft and would have been highly coveted by some of the country’s top programs had he opted to transfer, but he remained in Fort Collins to guide the team for one more season. It paid off for both him and Colorado State, as he’s averaging a team-high 16.5 points and seven assists per game. The latter number ranks him among the top 10 Division I players. The transfer portal helped bolster Stevens’ supporting cast, landing him Nique Clifford and forward Joel Scott, both Colorado natives, who came over from Colorado and Division II Black Hills State, respectively.

In the NCAA Tournament, it will be a group with something to prove. The Rams have just one win in their past five appearances in the Big Dance dating back to 1990, including a loss to Michigan as a number six seed in 2022. This year? The Rams were the last team to qualify for the tournament, which pits them in a play-in game against fellow 10-seed Virginia. Should the Rams win—and then defeat number 7 Texas—then they’d almost certainly have to face off against the University of Tennessee and Dalton Knecht in the second round. To its credit, though, Colorado State has shown this season that it can defeat top competition, with wins against Creighton, Colorado, and reigning national runner-up San Diego State on its resume.

University of Colorado Buffaloes Men

• The ceiling: Sweet 16
• The floor: Play-in game
• Player to keep an eye on: Junior guard KJ Simpson

As recently as a month ago, the Buffs’ season would have qualified as a significant disappointment following a Feb. 15 loss to a middling UCLA team that dropped them to 16-9 overall and 7-7 in the mediocre Pac-12 Conference. Since then, however, they became one of the hottest teams in the country, winning eight games in a row to launch them into their conference championship match and into the tournament field.

With its underwhelming start behind it, Colorado could be as dangerous a double-digit seed as there will be in the tournament. Coach Tad Boyle has produced NBA players throughout his tenure—no small feat given the program’s history—but he has one of his most loaded teams yet. KJ Simpson is a first-team all-Pac-12 honoree who was the only player in the conference to finish in the top three in both points and assists per game. Tristan da Silva is a veteran forward who can stretch the floor. Then, maybe most notably, there’s freshman Cody Williams, who’s widely projected as a top-10 pick in June’s NBA Draft and gives the Buffs the kind of piece few, if any, potential opponents can match.

Though Boyle has been Colorado’s most consistent and successful coach in decades, leading the program to the tournament six of the past 12 years it was held, the Buffs haven’t reached at least the Sweet 16 since 1969. Is this the year they finally break through?