How CU and CSU Tournament Teams Stack Up to Years Past

March Madness is officially here, and the state of Colorado has some bragging rights this year heading into the Big Dance. 

The men's basketball teams for Colorado State University and the University of Colorado were both selected to play in First Four matchups to open the NCAA Tournament against Virginia and Boise State, respectively. Meanwhile, the CU women's basketball team earned a No. 5 seed in the women's bracket.

To put it in perspective, there are only 21 schools out of a 68-team field with squads playing in both the men's and women's tournaments this year. This year is also the first time since 2013 that both the CU and CSU men's teams have both gotten in together.

Sure, the selections have been met with groans and face palms from local basketball fans who had hoped for better seeding. But at least they can sleep soundly knowing Colorado is one of just a handful of states to have multiple schools and teams involved in March Madness this year.

While it's easy to get caught up in the hype, Colorado basketball has been here before, experiencing both victorious upsets and heartbreaking losses in the NCAA tournament — but never a championship.

CU Women Continue to Set the Standard 

Out of the three Colorado schools playing in the Big Dance, the CU women's basketball team currently has the best postseason record at 19-15 and sexiest résumé, with sixteen invitations overall and trips to the Elite Eight in 2002, 1995 and 1993.

The Buffs have signature tournament wins over number-one-ranked Stanford in the 1993 Sweet Sixteen and number-two-ranked Stanford in the 2002 Sweet Sixteen. It beat the third-seeded Duke Blue Devils in 2023 and has gone to three consecutive tournaments now.

"[We're] so excited," head coach JR Payne told CU media after being selected this year. "So many of us have been here a long time, and really been a part of building our program to where we expected to play in March. I think that in and of itself is an incredible thing. An incredible testament to the amount of work and effort that's been poured in from players, staff, coaches, and everybody involved."

The last time the CU women's team made three consecutive appearances in the tournament was between 2001 and 2004. Last year the Buffs wound up losing to the eventual national champion runner-up, University of Iowa — led by NCAA scoring phenom Caitlin Clark — in the Sweet Sixteen.

The highest seed that the CU women have ever garnered was the number-one spot in the 1995 tournament's Midwest Region, with the school hosting first- and second-round games at the CU Events Center in Boulder; the Buffs ended up losing to Georgia in the Elite Eight that year. The lowest seed the team has ever been given was the seven-seed in 1988 and 1993. The last time the CU women were a five-seed was 2013, when the team lost in the first round to twelfth-seeded Kansas.

Colorado is DANCING!#MarchMadness @CUBuffsMBB pic.twitter.com/LJSVOzRDBv

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 17, 2024

CU Men Have Something to Prove

The CU men's basketball program has sixteen appearances overall, but is still likely trying to wash out the bad taste left from the 2021 NCAA tournament, when four-seed Florida State beat the fifth-seeded Buffs in the second round following CU's 96-73 drubbing of Georgetown to start things out.

Many fans felt CU squandered a golden opportunity to make some big waves in the 2021 tournament after landing its highest seed since the NCAA started seeding the field in 1979. The ten-seed this year is Colorado's second lowest of all time (CU had an eleven-seed in 2012). That year, the Buffs actually managed to make it to the second round for only the second time in two decades.

CU also played in the tournament in 2003, 2013, 2014 and 2016, but never made it out of the first round, losing to Michigan State, lllinois, Pittsburgh and Connecticut, respectively.

The highest seed that the CU men have ever gotten was the five-seed, in 2021.

Two seniors are currently on the men's squad now: Tristan da Silva and Luke O'Brien, both of whom are the only players left over from the 2021 team.

"You'd rather have experience than not, there's no doubt about it," head coach Tad Boyle told CU media on Monday, March 18. "There's no teacher in life like experience. ... I'm not saying that's a huge advantage. It's not something you can't overcome. But when your players know what's coming and they've been there before, it helps."

One of CU's most iconic wins in the NCAA tournament came in 1997, when Denver high school legend and future NBA star Chauncey Billups helped the nine-seed Buffs upset Indiana, an eight-seed, to spoil a much-anticipated matchup between Bob Knight's Hoosiers and Dean Smith's number-one-ranked North Carolina squad.

Billups scored 24 points in the 80-62 first round beatdown of Knight's squad, led by first-year head coach Ricardo Patton.

"I would like to thank the media for not acknowledging that Colorado was even in the tournament,'' Patton jokingly told reporters after the game.

The 1997 appearance by the CU men was the team's first in 28 years. At the time, the eighteen-point loss for Indiana was tied for the school's worst ever in a span of 71 tournament games, per the Associated Press.

"When you are soundly beaten, there is not much you can say beyond that, except [Colorado] was a team that was certainly good enough to beat us badly," Knight told reporters.

Another famous team and name from years past is the 2012 and 2013 CU men's tourney squad, which featured current Los Angeles Lakers player Spencer Dinwiddie and Andre Roberson, who played seven years in the NBA.

The two helped bring CU to two consecutive tournaments for the first time since the 1960s. Dinwiddie emerged as a freshman during the men's winning run through the Pac-12 tournament in 2012, the school's only Pac-12 tournament title as the conference is about to shut down. He went on to average 15.3 points per game during the 2012-2013 season.

Roberson was one of the country's top rebounders during his three years at CU, reaching first-team All-Pac-12 in 2012 and 2013 and receiving conference Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2013.

The Buffs lost in the second round of the 2012 tournament as an eleven-seed to third-seeded Baylor, after upsetting sixth-seeded UNLV in the first round. Next year's run ended earlier, with CU losing to seventh-seeded Illinois in the first round in 2013.

CU's first few trips to the NCAA tournament came in 1940, 1942 and 1946, when the school was in the now-defunct Skyline Conference. After joining the Big Eight in 1948, CU made trips to the Big Dance again in 1955, 1962, 1963 and 1969 — only making it out of the second round once, in 1955.

The 1969 bid was noteworthy on account of who sent the Buffaloes packing.

CSU Looking to Outshine "Big Brother" Once Again

In 1969, the Colorado State Rams played their single best basketball season in men's history, culminating with a Sweet Sixteen win over CU and the school's first (and only) trip to the Elite Eight. Since then, it's been doom and gloom for the CSU men's squad, with losses in the first or second rounds of the 1989, 1990, 2003, 2012, 2013 and 2022 tournaments — for a combined record of 4-12.

But for one year, the Rams were on top of their in-state rivals.

“It’s certainly a time I remember clearly and look back on fondly,” team chaplain Bo Mitchell, who was a sophomore at the time, told BuffZone.com in a 2019 interview celebrating the fiftieth anniversary.

The 1969 showdown was the only year in school history that CSU played CU in the NCAA tournament. Colorado was ranked eighteenth in the nation at the time after recording its first-ever twenty-win season (finishing with 21 wins overall) thanks to one of its best players to ever suit up: Cliff Meely.

“We all heard about Cliff, and then he looked just so smooth and amazing in practice," Mitchell remembered. "And Gordie Tope was amazing, too. But it seemed like Meely was way ahead of everybody. He was so smooth with everything he did. He was a star before he even started playing college ball."

To this day, Meely still holds the CU men's record for most points scored in a single game (47) and season scoring (729).

"We thought if we did it once, we were going to do it every year," sophomore CSU player Ron Maulsby told BuffZone.com. "Of course, we didn’t.”

CSU only has two NCAA tournament wins since 1969, coming against seventh-seeded Florida in 1989 and ninth-seeded Missouri in 2013.

If the Rams go far this year, one person the players can look to for advice is assistant coach Ali Farokhmanesh, who famously dethroned top-seeded Kansas in the second round of the 2010 NCAA tournament with his Cinderella Northern Iowa squad. Farokhmanesh, who hit the game winner against KU, is regularly asked about that game since joining the CSU staff in 2018.

"Everyone's like, 'Oh, are you sick of it?'" he told the Coloradoan in 2019. "I'm like, 'No, it brings back awesome memories.'"

We'll see if the Buffs or Rams can create some memories of their own this week.

CSU is scheduled to face off against the University of Virginia on Tuesday, March 19, at 7:10 p.m. MST on TruTV. CU tips off against Boise State on Wednesday, March 20, at 7:10 p.m. MST on TruTV. The CU women play against Drake on Friday, March 22, at 5 p.m. on ESPNews.