LAS VEGAS — There will be no end-of-season watch party for the this year, except perhaps behind closed doors. Yet that doesn’t mean the Buffs’ basketball season is over.
Late Thursday night, after CU was eliminated from the Pac-12 Conference tournament by No. 7 Arizona, head coach Tad Boyle wasn’t ready to start making travel plans for the National Invitation Tournament, the consolation prize for teams with winning records that fall short of making the cut for the Big Dance.
Nevertheless, most projections have the Buffs squarely within the 32-team NIT field, which will be announced live on ESPNU Sunday night at 6:30 p.m. MST.
“If we get the invite, we’ll take it,” Boyle said. “I’d love to keep coaching these guys. I just don’t know. We haven’t been in this arena since our first year here. And our first year here we were the last team out of the NCAA Tournament and we were the No. 1 seed in the NIT. But that won’t be the case this year. So much of it has to do with these smaller conference tournaments.”
Current NIT projections (yes, those exist) have the Buffs as a six or seven seed in the NIT, meaning they would play a first-round date on the road between Tuesday and Thursday.
As of Friday afternoon, one of the leading NIT forecasters at NYCBuckets.com had the Buffs (19-14) listed as a No. 6 seed, with a first-round matchup at Indiana followed by a second-round date against either Texas A&M or Pac-12 rival Cal. The NIT Bracket Project put together by bracketmatrix.com has CU as a No. 7 seed playing at Illinois, though that particular forecast has not been updated in almost a week.
“If we get another chance to play together, I think that would be awesome” CU senior said. “It’s hard because it’s kind of out of our hands right now. So we just have to sit back and wait.”
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