For those who’ve watched the Colorado women’s basketball team all year, the Buffaloes’ NCAA Tournament run doesn’t feel like much of a Cinderalla story.
Yes, it’s the program’s Sweet 16 trip since 2003, but tead coach JR Payne’s veteran squad has been slaying dragons for quite some time now with regular season wins over Utah, Arizona, UCLA and Washington. Confidence has followed, naturally.
Ahead of Colorado’s Sweet 16 matchup against Iowa on Friday, I asked fifth-year senior guard Tayanna Jones about her team’s mentality heading into another challenging game.
“Everybody’s locked in,” Jones said. “We have the mentality that we can beat anybody. I know you guys heard it already, but our mentality is just making sure we’re locked in, doing the little things. I think that’s what has taken us so far this whole season is just the little things that other teams don’t look into.”
Jones was also asked about potentially matching up against Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who comes in averaging 26.8 points and is one of the nation’s top shooters.
“She’s a great player,” Jones said. “I love defense. I didn’t used to love defense, but I love challenges. That’s something I’m definitely going to take into and really study her game, look at what she likes to do, how she likes to score exactly coming off the dribble. We all know she loves to shoot the logo shot, so that’ll definitely be something we’ll be all locked into.”
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