Colorado is excited for a chance to compete in March Madness

BOULDER — Colorado is headed back to the NCAA Tournament!

The Colorado Buffaloes drew a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will play 12-seed Georgetown in the Round of 64 on Saturday. The game will tip off at 10 a.m. MST on Saturday. The winner of the game will play on Monday for a chance for a Sweet 16 appearance.

Four other Pac-12 teams made the NCAA Tournament. USC was the second-best seed team behind Colorado, as a No. 6. Oregon came in at No. 7 and UCLA will have a play-in game against Michigan State for an 11-seed. Oregon State wouldn’t have made the tournament but it won the Pac-12 Tournament and checked in as a 12-seed.

Colorado hasn’t appeared in the NCAA Tournament since 2016 when the Buffs lost to the first round. they would have appeared in the tournament last season, but the tournament was canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Nobody on Colorado’s roster has played in March Madness before. For many, playing in the tournament has been a lifelong dream.

For point guard McKinley Wright IV, heading to the NCAA Tournament brings back memories of Kemba Walker’s step-back buzzer-beater that capped his UConn Huskies’ title run and of Trey Burke’s run two years later that came up just short as Michigan lost in the championship game.

D’Shawn Schwartz thinks back to Anthony Davis’ run with Kentucky.

“My first big moment watching the tournament was that year Anthony Davis won Most Outstanding Player (in the Final Four),” Schwartz said. “He didn’t score a field goal but he affected the game so well. That was my first tournament game that I really watched and locked in on, so ever since then (the tournament) has just been a big moment.”

In his first NCAA Tournament game, Schwartz will take on somebody who put together a similar March run to Davis’.

The Georgetown Hoyas are coached by NBA legend Patrick Ewing. But before he was the No. 1 overall pick, NBA Rookie of the Year, an 11-time All-Star and a Basketball Hall-of-Famer whose jersey was retired by the New York Knicks, Ewing led his Georgetown Hoyas to an NCAA title in 1984. He was the Final Four’s most outstanding player… despite only scoring 10 his team’s 84 points in the championship.

Colorado head coach Tad Boyle doesn’t know Ewing well, but the two share some commonalities.

“It’s funny,” Boyle said. “We both came out high school the same year, 1981. He was a little better player than I was, had a little better career.”

Boyle has, obviously, followed Ewing’s career and said that he’s a “heck of a guy and a heck of a coach.” When it comes to the details, Boyle didn’t really have much to contribute. That isn’t much of a surprise, considering Colorado has never played Georgetown before.

“How do we match up with Georgetown? I can’t even answer that question right now because I don’t know anything about Georgetown,” Boyle said. “I’m sure Patrick Ewing could say the same thing about Colorado.”

While it won’t count for much on Saturday, D’Shawn Schwartz said he’s learned about Ewing by playing against his character in the NBA 2K video game series. When it comes to the actual Georgetown basketball team, Wright said he saw some of their championship game on Saturday.

Colorado is heading from Las Vegas (the site of the Pac-12 Tournament) to Indianapolis (the site of the 2021 NCAA Tournament) Sunday night, and they’ll start watching film and preparing for Georgetown there.