I wrote the words “Colorado State” about an hour ago, and it reminded me that those guys were the top seed in this past NIT and played to a worthy-of-much-celebration fourth-place finish. With the Rams within earshot of the bubble on what bracketologies we can find, we’ve probably been remiss to not talk about them more.
Let’s fix that.
Colorado State’s in a beautiful place, and I’m not just giving due credit to Fort Collins. By virtue of playing in the Mountain West, the Rams can always drop themselves down three or four seed lines with just one well-placed loss. Boise State took advantage of this expertly last year. There are some bad teams in the Mountain West. There are also probably going to be bubble teams galore, giving them opportunities for more conventional bad losses that still, unlike in the Big Ten, leave them with a respectable overall win-loss. If you were to choose a conference to join in your effort to make and eventually win the NIT, you’d pick the Mountain West.
Will Colorado State do it? It’s hard to say. There’s no way to know who their best players are, who’s coming back, whether they’ve changed coaches, who their biggest foes are. And I’m not just saying that I personally don’t know those things. They are straight-up unknowable. No one knows. Humanity has limits.
With that, then, we don’t really know if Colorado State will fulfill their NIT potential.
But we know they’re gonna try.
