As far back as June, Colorado State women’s basketball head coach Ryun Williams and his staff knew they had assembled a special team for the 2025-26 season.
The combination of newcomers and returning players excited them, and they could tell right away the team had the potential to be successful.
They were right.
After winning the Mountain West Conference tournament last week, the Rams earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade, and as the No. 12 seed in the Sacramento 4 region, they will face No. 5 Michigan State in the first round Friday in Norman, Oklahoma.
“We saw it in June with the addition of the newbies that we added and the oldies,” Williams said. “Obviously, they’ve been pretty competitive for a while now, but we saw it in June, and we said, amongst our staff, that this group, they’re going to fight. They’re going to put themselves in a position to win. And that’s what they’ve done all year long. So, their competitive makeup is right where it needs to be for an NCAA Tournament.”
In those summer workouts, the team’s bond began to form, creating a chemistry the players attribute to the success they’ve had this season.
They support each other. They communicate well. And they spend hours with each other off the basketball court.
“I think the way that we spend so much time together outside of basketball has really helped us on the floor,” CSU senior Madelyn Bragg said. “The way that we communicate with each other, we all hold each other accountable, but we want the best for each other at the end of the day. I feel like we’ve done a really good job of holding each other accountable and being supportive of each other, and that just makes it so much stronger in March.”
Bragg was one of the newcomers for the Rams this season. She transferred from Division II Northern State to play her senior season in Fort Collins.
She fit right in with the holdovers from last year’s squad, starting all but five games for the Rams this season while averaging 8.2 points per game.
Sophomore Brooke Carlson, in her second season with the Rams, also said the evolution of the team’s chemistry has contributed to the team’s success throughout the regular season and so far in the postseason.
“We play together really well,” she said. “We play off each other. We look for each other, and we can also hold each other accountable for things, and I think that really builds the chemistry on and off the court. So, just being able to play with that is great to see.”
After playing in all 32 of the Rams’ games as a freshman, she has started every game for the team this season and has averaged 11.3 points per contest.
CSU went 24-7 in the regular season and 15-5 in its last season in the Mountain West Conference. The Rams then won three games in three days to capture their first conference tournament championship since 2016.
The Rams have knocked on the door for an NCAA Tournament berth the past few seasons. A year ago, they finished the regular season 22-9 but lost their first game in the conference tournament. The year before, led by Mountain West player of the year McKenna Hofschild, they went 19-10 in the regular season and lost in the tournament semifinals.
With a perfect run in Las Vegas last week, the team finally broke through.
“We’re always trying to put ourselves in this position,” Williams said. “It’s hard to do. It’s really hard to do that stuff. I’m glad this group knocked down the door, but we’ve had good teams that have laid the foundation, so to speak. This is a tournament for this group. But it’s also a tournament for our program and those that came before us.”
Senior Hannah Ronsiek, who has been on the team for four years, was a part of those recent close calls and believes the team overcame some of the same growing pains this season she has been through with previous teams.
Only this year, the team was ready when the moment came to break a 10-year NCAA Tournament drought.
“There’s been so many great Colorado State teams, so it’s just really exciting that I was able to be part of that legacy,” she said. “We saw the work that each of us was putting in and we knew what we wanted and we all had the same sort of goal. We just developed such a great bond and we’re all best friends and so, it just goes really well.”
The Rams and Spartans will play at 5:30 p.m. Friday with the winner advancing to the second round to face either No. 4 Oklahoma or No. 14 Idaho on Sunday.
