“It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve had an incredible group of young women in our program that have gotten us to this point,” CU Buffs head coach JR Payne said.
Kiszla: They’re the Invisi-Buffs, a 21-victory basketball team unloved and ignored by NCAA tourney bracketologists.
Payne knew the challenge at CU wouldn’t be the same as at Southern Utah or Santa Clara. The Pac-12 is arguably the best conference in the country for women’s basketball. “I think that’s a fair analogy,” Payne said. “We play against people in the Pac-12 that have rosters full of McDonald’s All-Americans. We came here with an understanding of who we want to be, the types of people we want to coach, the types of culture we want to have. But you look around and you’re like, ‘OK, that’s all fine and dandy, but we’ve still got to compete with that.’ So there were some people that we’re sort of trying to plug a hole and make sure that we could compete right now.
When the staff did sign transfers, they enhanced what was already a good team, rather than simply plugging holes. Quay Miller and Tameiya Sadler and Tayanna Jones have been key players all season.“We all see the end result, but our players, coaches, everyone that touches our program, what they’ve put into it to get here, it’s just amazing,” assistant coach Shandrika Lee said. “I’m so proud of everyone. Long nights, long weekends, a lot of tears, a lot of pain, a lot of losses.