Among the staff there is the unflappable partner of the head coach, a program legend, and one assistant who has known little else but March Madness since joining the Colorado program.
Then there is Jordynn “JoJo” Hernandez.
Until last summer, Hernandez had rarely strayed from her native Texas. She grew up there. She played collegiately at UT-Arlington, then began her coaching career there before moving to Stephen F. Austin. She enjoyed success at both stops, being part of staffs at two different schools that won conference tournaments to advance to the NCAA Tournament.
Why ever leave?
Then Hernandez received a call from Colorado women’s basketball coach JR Payne and her lead assistant/husband Toriano Towns.
After spreading her wings and , Hernandez had played a role on a staff that has led the Buffs to the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in five seasons, a run that was set to continue with a Saturday night first-round date against Illinois.
“I had zero family here. Zero ties here,” Hernandez said. “I did have a lot of job offers after last year that were actually closer to home, different opportunities that would make actual sense. I told my boss (at Stephen F. Austin) I’m not leaving. And then all of the sudden I get this call from T and JR. I don’t know what it was, but I kind of just felt it.
“With JR, I instantly fell in love with her. I want to be a mom. I want to be a wife. I want to be a coach. She’s everything I aspire to be. It makes sense to go work for somebody like that.”
Hernandez may be still relatively new to the coaching profession, but her youth and status as a newcomer has made her a valuable fit on a team that welcomed 10 new players into the mix this season. Hernandez says she has jelled with the club right alongside the players.
“I think whatap been cool about it is that not only am I a newcomer, but our whole team is pretty much newcomers,” Hernandez said. “I think the cool part has been how they’ve kind of come together, and to make a tournament appearance. Thatap pretty special. You don’t see that often, especially with the portal. Thatap hard to do. We’ve done an awesome job with this team.”
If Hernandez is the newbie and Towns the program pillar, the rest of Payne’s staff has played its role in shaping CU’s sustained success. Shelley Sheetz is a program legend who joined the CU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2004. Taelor Karr, a former West Coast Conference Player of the Year at Gonzaga, joined the Buffs ahead of the 2023-24 season, which ended with the Buffs’ third consecutive NCAA Tournament.
And assistant/director of operations Matt Hower can say the Buffs have done nothing but win since he joined the program. A former prep/club coach in Fort Collins, Hower joined CU’s staff in the middle of the 2021-22 season. The Buffs promptly reeled off three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, and missed keeping that streak intact by the narrowest of margins in 2025.
“A lot of it is the foundation that JR has set,” Hower said. “It took a little bit of time to build, and once that first group came through we were going to be the hardest-working, toughest, most disciplined team. That really is when we recruit kids, whether they’re freshmen or out of the transfer portal, we look for players that love basketball, that work hard, that are about the right things. And that all kind of comes from JR and setting that foundation.”
