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K.J. will be laying on the beach in two years. | Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
The Buffs will be in a group that includes North Carolina, UConn and Michigan State.
The Colorado Buffaloes basketball team is on the up-and-up. Tad Boyle continues to build the prestige of the program in terms of consistent success, recruiting pull and NBA development. The good news today is that the Buffs will play in the 2024 Maui Invitational, the premier early season basketball tournament, reported by Jon Rothstein.
Not only will the Buffs travel to Hawaii during November, 2024, but they will compete against a number of excellent basketball programs. As noted in the tweet above, those other teams will be North Carolina, UConn, Michigan State, Memphis, Iowa State and Dayton. (Host program Chaminade will not be 8th team, since they are in the 2023 field and only compete every other year.) Those are capital-P Programs and Colorado gets to be one of them with the chance to further their reputation.
The Buffs have a recent history with at least three of those schools. UConn defeated Colorado in the 2016 NCAA Tournament, Josh Scott’s final. CU defeated Dayton in the 2019 NIT, then in 2020 D’Shawn Schwartz hit the buzzer-beater three to beat them in Chicago. Iowa State is a former (and future?) Big 12 rival, although neither the Buffs or the Cyclones were good at the same time after 1997.
Obviously it’s difficult to look two years into the future with set expectations, but the roster is set up nicely. K.J. Simpson, Lawson Lovering and Julian Hammond will be seniors, Quincy Allen and Javon Ruffin will be fourth-year juniors, and you add whatever talent Boyle can bring in. If you believe in this young core — and if you can splurge for a November trip to Maui — then you should be very excited about this tournament invitation.
by Sam Metivier
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