Colorado State shuts down Virginia in First Four to advance in NCAA Tournament

Colorado State made it into the NCAA Tournament’s field of 68 under the wire and showed in Tuesday’s 67-42 win over Virginia in the First Four why they deserved a spot.

The Rams dominated the game between the No. 10 seeds with both forward Joel Scott and guard Nique Clifford scoring double-doubles. Scott put up 23 points and 11 rebounds and went 9-of-13 from the field, while Clifford had 17 points and 10 rebounds.

“I never would have imagined that,” Colorado State coach Niko Medved told CBS Sports reporter Jon Rothstein of the Rams’ final score.

The Rams shot 55.3 percent from the floor, compared to the Hoos’ 25.0 percent from the field. Virginia failed to score in the final nine minutes of the first half, giving Colorado State a 13-point lead at halftime.

Guard Reece Beekman led Virginia with 15 points, three rebounds and four assists.

The Cavaliers are still seeking their first NCAA Tournament win since 2019 when they won the national championship. Since then, the program has been eliminated twice in the first round (2021 and 2023).

Colorado State (25-10) was the final at-large bid announced by the selection committee on Sunday night and was one of six teams from the Mountain West to reach the NCAA Tournament. The Rams advanced to play No. 7 seed Texas on Friday in Charlotte, N.C., in the tournament’s first round.

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O'Neil: Tony Bennett is all that is right in CBB. But this is bad basketball

So, about that

The wait to flame the NCAA Tournament selection committee lasted two games. The consideration given to proponents of expanding the field died after 80 minutes of game action in this event.

What a debacle. What a cataclysmically bad call. No one needed Virginia in this event this season. Good defense, sure. Top 200 offense? Barely! It checked in at No. 193 and finished 54th in the NET rankings and 67th on KenPom.com. The Cavaliers shouldn’t have been in Dayton, Ohio, and proved by missing 19 straight shots across the first and second halves. Now, any of the other questionable decisions the committee made — inclusion, seeding, whatever — will be re-litigated endlessly for the next three weeks. It should be super fun.

Meanwhile, there are power-conference teams that were deemed less qualified than Virginia by the committee. Some people would like to alter the the NCAA Tournament’s format to ensure those teams participate in future years. Let the horror show that played out Tuesday be the warning: This is what you’re going to get if you give those teams a chance. You will do the unimaginable and make some NCAA Tournament games unwatchable. — Brian Hamilton, college basketball senior writer

But what did we learn about Colorado State?

Probably that the Rams are yet another casualty of a selection committee that more and more looks like it panicked when the chaos hit last weekend. A team that at one point was ranked inside the Associated Press poll top 15 wound up as a No. 10 seed in the First Four. It then promptly averaged 1.208 points per possession in the first 37 minutes against one of the best defenses in the country, building a 24-point lead before garbage time. The evaluation was both a shot against Medved’s crew and the Mountain West at large. Colorado State fired back.

Which can’t make Texas happy, among others. We’ll see how the Rams’ legs hold up, but they’ve got a head start on tournament play and they just destroyed Virginia with an All-America caliber guard, Isaiah Stevens, scoring five points in 35 minutes. This could be a launching pad. — Hamilton

What does Virginia do now?

It doesn’t sound like Beekman will use the extra year of eligibility afforded him as a player who participated in the pandemic-addled 2020-21 season. But of the Cavaliers’ top eight minutes-loggers, five can return for 2024-25. Three of them were sophomores this year and one was a freshman. Two — Ryan Dunn and Blake Buchanan — at least have the frame to develop into the post presence this year’s version didn’t have. It’s not starting from scratch. It’s good to be older across the board. There won’t be as much turnover — theoretically — to deal with.

There is a lot for Tony Bennett to consider, and plenty of rumors circulating through the college basketball universe about what those considerations might be, 500 games into his time at Virginia. His teams have regressed to being just fine, but he also has pieces to work with going forward. This state of affairs would be the envy of hundreds of other places nationally … but is it satisfactory in Charlottesville? Whatever way it’s viewed, this feels like an inflection-point offseason. — Hamilton

Required reading

(Photo: Rick Osentoski / USA Today)