As she sat down behind the microphone Wednesday at her team’s media day, JR Payne couldn’t conceal her smile.
“Wow, it's wonderful to see all of you guys,” the Colorado women’s basketball coach said to the assembled media. “We haven't had a full room like this in a while.”
For much of the past year, Payne has had every reason to smile.
The 2021-22 season was an undeniable breakthrough for Payne and the Buffs. In her sixth season in charge of the program, Payne helped lead Colorado to 22 wins and the first NCAA Tournament appearance of her tenure. As a No. 7 seed, the Buffs lost their first game, a 10-point setback against Creighton, but that defeat could only be so gutting. A program that entered the season with just one NCAA Tournament berth since 2004 had taken a much-needed step in the right direction.
Now for Payne, her players and her staff comes the next, more complicated part – building on that success so that it’s not a one-year aberration, but an expectation for the program as it aims to become what it was earlier this century.
“We want to be in the NCAA Tournament every single year,” Payne said. “That's the goal and to make a run in the NCAA Tournament. Being there is our expectation. I don't mean that in an arrogant way. We just did it for the first time last year, but that's our expectation. We recruit players that want to compete for championships and are driven to be great. That's where we plan to be.”
Laudable as that belief is in theory, it will be tougher to implement in practice. Colorado was once a nationally competitive program, with 12 NCAA Tournament appearances in a 17-year stretch under legendary coach Ceal Barry from 1987-2004. In that time, the Buffs finished first in their conference four times, won the league tournament on five different occasions and made the second week of the NCAA Tournament five times, including three Elite Eights.
The years that followed were lean. Beginning with Barry’s last season in 2004-05, Colorado finished with a losing record nine times in a 17-year period and had just two seasons with at least 20 wins. Through Payne’s first five years in Boulder, her teams were 72-75. They were relatively steady, never finishing with fewer than 12 wins, but also failing to surpass 17.
Then came last season. A 1-6 run from mid-January to early February threw cold water on a 13-0 start to the season, but the Buffs recovered, winning eight of their final 10 games heading into the NCAA Tournament, highlighted by wins against Oregon and Arizona.
“The biggest thing I noticed last year as we were going through the Pac-12 play – and I don't know that I could necessarily have said it before last year – is that our team fully expected to win every single game that we played,” Payne said. “It wasn't a fluke that we beat Oregon. It wasn't a fluke that we beat Oregon State. It wasn't a fluke that we swept the LA schools. We believed that we were going to beat those teams. I think last year was the first time I can honestly say that. The scout was prepared before, we knew what we needed to do, but I never saw until last year that true like one-through-15 we know we're going to be Oregon.
“To me, that's the biggest blessing because as coaches we know we can beat people. You need every single member of your ball club to know that, not just hope for it. I know that this group, going into a game against Stanford or a game against whoever it might be, we know we can beat everybody.”
Channeling the accomplishments of that season into sustained success moving forward will come with challenges. Mya Hollingshed, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, is gone, having been drafted with the No. 8 overall pick in the WNBA Draft (though she was surprisingly waived by the Las Vegas Aces less than three weeks later). Starting forward Peanut Tuitele graduated, as well, representing another key loss, particularly from a leadership and on-court communication standpoint.
Still, Payne returns five of her top seven scorers from last season. The hopes of that group rest the most on a few key contributors. Senior center Quay Miller was last season’s Pac-12 sixth player of the year in her first season with the program after transferring from Washington. Senior guard Jaylyn Sherrod was the team’s top play-maker, averaging a team-high 3.8 assists per game. Kindyll Wetta will look to build on an impressive freshman season, one in which the Castle Rock native earned Pac-12 all-freshman and all-defensive team honors.
“As far as filling that role, I always say when you lose a really great player that's very impactful, you never replace that player with one person. It's a collective effort,” Payne said of making up for Hollingshed’s loss. “The makeup and dynamic of your team is different when you lose a really dynamic player. Quay could have started on any Pac-12 team, including ours, but she just sort of filled that role of being able to bring that scoring and rebounding punch off the bench. We expect her to have a really big impact. She's capable of scoring, rebounding. I've been very impressed with Quay’s desire and ability to lead from a vocal standpoint.”
Beyond that trio, junior guard Frida Formann has been a productive player in her two seasons on campus, most recently averaging 7.5 points per game in 2021-22. Junior guard Tameiya Sadler, another Washington transfer who debuted with the Buffs last season, started in 12 of the 26 games she played and averaged five points per game. Senior forward Charlotte Whittaker is back after medically redshirting last season while recovering from a pair of hip surgeries. As a sophomore in 2020-21, she averaged 5.1 points and 2.1 rebounds in 14.8 minutes per game. Colorado could get a boost from another intra-conference arrival in 6-foot-3 center Aaronette Vonleh, an Arizona transfer who averaged 4.1 points per game and shot 61.5% from the field for the Wildcats as a freshman last season.
Taken together, it’s a collection of players that gives Payne confidence that last season might not have been a blip, but the start of something she was trying to build for years.
“I think we have a great foundation,” she said. “You never want your new players to be the best players on your team. You want people that have been here, that have been through the wars, so to speak, and then add talent to a pretty solid roster, which is what we've done. We feel good about our roster. I think we have everything we need to be successful.”
