CU Buffs land No. 5 seed for NCAA Tournament, to face Drake in opening round –
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CU women’s basketball players react to being selected as the fifth seed for the NCAA tournament during a watch party in the Touchdown Club at Dal Ward at the University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, Colorado on March 17, 2024. The fifth-seeded Colorado Buffaloes (22-9) will play No. 12 Drake (29-5) to open the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in Manhattan, Kansas. Drake secured a ticket to the dance after a buzzer-beating 76-75 win over Missouri State in the MVC championship on Sunday. Anna Miller got a layup to fall for the victory.(Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
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 in Manhattan, Kan. Fourth-seeded 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 top-16 reveal on Feb. 15. In the eight years…
Read More: CU Buffs land No. 5 seed for NCAA Tournament, to face Drake in opening round – 2024-03-18 03:45:00