Basketball
The CSU women's basketball team began play in 1974, and has a 482-434 all-time record entering the 2007 season. The team has 5 all-time NCAA appearances, most recently in 2002, and previously in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2001. The Rams made it to the Sweet Sixteen in 1999, the culmination of a successful 4-year run behind team leaders Becky Hammon and Katie Cronin. Hammon, owner of most major CSU basketball records, and Cronin have both gone on to successful careers in the WNBA. CSU made its most recent WNIT appearance in 2004. Kristen Holt, formerly an assistant coach at CSU, was recently named head coach for the 2009 season. The Rams play at Moby Arena, where they are 204-82 since 1987.
The dominant historical figure of Colorado State men's basketball is Jim Williams. Williams coached CSU for 26 seasons beginning in 1955, winning 352 games and taking the team to 4 NCAA tournaments, including the quarterfinals in 1969. He also led the team to 2 upsets of UCLA, then led by legendary coach John Wooden. Entering the 2005-6 season, 30% of all CSU men's basketball game had been coached by Williams. In 1988, Boyd Grant, a standout under Williams, returned to CSU to coach. That same season the Rams made their first post-season appearance in over two decades, climbing to 3rd place in the NIT. The team's success continued in 1989 and 1990 with consecutive Western Athletic Conference titles and NCAA appearances. However, it would be until 2003 before the Rams claimed another conference title. Jason Smith became only the second CSU player to be picked in the first round of the NBA draft. Smith's early departure, along with several legal issues and transfers, left the program with just two remaining scholarship players when CSU hired North Dakota State's Tim Miles in March 2007. Under Miles the program gradually improved, culminating with the Rams' first at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament in more than two decades in 2012. Following the season, Miles departed for the head coaching position at Nebraska. Colorado State hired Southern Miss coach Larry Eustachy to take over in April of 2012.
Read more about this topic: Colorado State Rams
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)