MANHATTAN, Kan. – Colorado women's basketball entered Bramlage Coliseum this weekend with one goal in mind: find a way.
Their trip to Manhattan may not have been what they had in mind for most of the season, as CU opened the NCAA Tournament in hostile territory, but they had been here before. The goal remained the same.
While it surely was not easy, the fifth-seeded Buffs (24-9) found their way back to the Sweet 16 for the second straight season, navigating past Drake on Friday before a gutsy 63-50 victory over the fourth-seeded Kansas State Wildcats (26-8) on Sunday afternoon.
The win keeps the black and gold dancing into Albany, New York to face the winner of Iowa and West Virginia. Most likely, a rematch of last year's Sweet 16 matchup with the Iowa Hawkeyes will be set for this Saturday.
Colorado had to scratch and claw their way through nearly every second against their future Big 12 contemporaries, but that's the style of play head coach JR Payne's group was built for. The Buffs had more steals (17) than points allowed in the second half (15) and used another strong third quarter effort to defeat the Wildcats in front of a rowdy, sold-out road crowd.
"The environment was incredible. Shoutout to Manhattan, Kansas, the entirety community has welcomed us this week," noted Payne after the game. "That's a great basketball environment. But we love that environment. We love being the underdog. We kind of thrive in that role."
A balanced scoring attack was led by Maddie Nolan with 11 points, who buried a trifecta of first-half 3s as the Buffaloes fruitfully ran in transition thanks to 22 forced turnovers. Aaronette Vonleh spearheaded this effort with a career-high seven steals. The center's previous career high in steals was just four, but she denied KSU's entry passes to Ayoka Lee time and time again.
"I was just trying to be really intentional about getting in the best position to be able to slip around her," Vonleh mentioned of her disruption against Lee. "I never really look in the steals column when I look in my name, so to see seven there is kind of crazy."
While Vonleh struggled offensively in her trench battle against the senior Wildcat (4-for-14 shooting), she made up for it with perhaps her best defensive performance of the entire season. As a team, CU nabbed 17 steals.
Kansas State opened the contest with a narrow upper hand, shooting 14-for-25 in the first half to enter the break up by two. Through twenty minutes, junior guard Serena Sundell had the black and gold staggering a bit with 11 points, and senior Gabby Gregory added nine. The duo combined for 3-for-3 shooting from long distance.
March is built for unlikely heroes, and when the Buffs direly needed one in the second half, Tameiya Sadler put on her cape. While point guard Jaylyn Sherrod was not having the best performance, she called upon the senior guard to replace her off the bench down the stretch, who decisively delivered.
"I had put Jaylyn back in, because again you don't often play long, extended minutes without Jaylyn, and she recognized that Tameiya was playing better than she was. So after a few minutes, she said, 'Get Tameiya back in for me,'" Payne recollected.
"And I [went] 'For you?'"
"'Yeah, for me."
"I was already thinking I had to get Tameiya back in the game, but Jay just recognized that Tam was the hot hand. Kindyll [Wetta] was incredible defensively so we were not going to take her out. It just ended up that that group was clicking and rolling and we went with that group."
Sadler accounted for eight of Colorado's final 10 third quarter points, building a crucial 15-3 run and 52-42 advantage that would ultimately hold. She finished with 10 points, two assists, and a steal.
Quay Miller was another key contributor to the win, logging a 10-point, 10-assist double-double. She is now tied for the most double-doubles in NCAA Tournament games in the history of the CU program with three.
While the Buffaloes fell entirely flat offensively for nearly six and a half of the game's closing ten minutes, Miller, Wetta and others battered down the defensive hatches to not let the Cats gain enough ground to sink CU's ship.
What started as a well-paced jog in the contest's opening half finished stuck in the mud, with both teams combining to shoot 14-for-55 (25%) in the second half and giving the Buffs' 19-7 third quarter all the more importance.
Colorado's 19 points off turnovers and 16 fast break points filled in the gaps when clean looks were difficult to generate in the halfcourt and proved too much for the Wildcats to handle.
CU ground to halt KSU's attack in the way they know best – stifling defense, thereby surviving and advancing into the Sweet 16 round in the program's second consecutive March Madness run with multiple wins.
"To the program, it means everything," said Payne. "Most of those players came to Colorado when we were not good. We were in last place in the conference and sort of believed in a vision and dream to help us be great, and through the pursuit of excellence every single day when we were not winning, they continued to work to be great."
This NCAA Tournament is the second straight in which the Buffs have entered the arena of an opponent with just one home regular season loss and exited victorious. After defeating Duke in their own building last season in the round of 32, the Buffs have become road warriors once again.
Colorado will now travel back to Boulder to prepare for a defining moment in recent program history in Albany next weekend, looking to build off of their round of 32 victory for a chance to keep their season alive and possibly enact even sweeter revenge on Saturday against the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by NCAA all-time leading scorer Caitlin Clark. Barring a West Virginia upset later Sunday night, the black and gold and their mantra of excellence will have the ultimate shot at redemption in just six days.
Cover photo by CUBuffsWBB/X
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