Buffs of Yesterday and Today Combine this Weekend

BOULDER – The Colorado women's basketball team is set to host returning alumni this weekend when Washington State (Friday, 7 p.m.) and Washington (Sunday, Noon) come to the CU Events Center.

The Buffaloes, playing their 49th season in 2022-23, will have former players in attendance at both games, with a special nod to the 1992-93 Elite Eight team across the weekend.

The current Buffs (18-5, 9-3 Pac-12) are having success this season that hasn't been seen in quite a while. The team has its best conference record through 12 games since the 2003-04 season and its best overall mark since the 2012-13 season.

Shelley Sheetz was a sophomore on the 1992-93 team and led the team Buffs with 15.7 points and 3.6 assists per game. She was one of four All-Big Eight Conference honorees along with Mindy Henry, Abby Wirfs and Amy Mathern. Sheetz highlighted the season with a season-high 28 points in the Buffs' Sweet Sixteen win over Stanford and was a Women's Basketball News All-America selection.

Sheetz, a longtime Division I assistant coach, hopped around the country with stops that included Pepperdine, Denver and Boston College. But she has always stayed true to the Black and Gold.

"My heart has always been here in Boulder," Sheetz expressed. "I bleed Black and Gold regardless of who was at the helm and running the program. I've always stayed in touch just reaching out with support for the players and the coaching staff from afar. I was always just a phone call or a text message away with my support."

Sheetz found her way back to CU last season working alongside Cory Lopez on the Colorado Radio Network and officially became a CU staffer over the summer filling the role of Special Assistant to the Head Coach/Director of Player Development.

Now fully entrenched with the Buffs it's hard for her not to notice the similarities between today's team and her Buffs of old.

"I saw a lot of it when I came aboard in May," Sheetz recalled. "It was in the work ethic I saw throughout the summer with the returning players. There were just immense similarities between both teams. I think it was in the first team meeting and I raised my hand and T [Toriano Towns] gave me hard time, 'Sheetz if you have something to say just stand up and say it.' I said then in August, that this team reminds me so much of that '93 team.

"I was crystal clear with them that I was not putting the pressure of saying we're an Elite Eight team, that's not what I was saying. I was just saying that that team and this year's team – there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that this team has. With the point guard play. We have shooters. We have inside play. The '93 team had those pieces as well. So, you fast forward to today and we're putting a good run together. I don't know where that's going to take us. Obviously, we have a big weekend at home, but the teams are so similar with the pieces of the puzzle."

The '93 team finished 12-2 in the Big Eight and was 22-1 through 23 games. They climbed to as high as No. 4 in the nation and finished 27-4 overall.

Only two other teams in CU history have made it to the Elite Eight, returning in 1994-95 and 2001-02.

"I said in that first team meeting that the one thing that '93 team had that we still need to grow in is our mentality," Sheetz added. "We had to develop that mentality of squish them like a bug and move on. The '93 team had that right away.

"This team is growing. We had to learn from our experiences at Texas Tech when we were up 16 and we fell short. We had to learn what it was like with the bright lights at Tennessee, and come up significantly short in that game. That first conference game this season at Utah, how are our young people going to react? How are our veterans going to remember what the Pac-12 is all about? We've had some little speed bumps that we had to get up and over this year, but that's been the building of our mentality and the '93 team had that right away. This team is building that. I like where we're at right now, but I also like where we can go."

All but one player from the 1992-93 season will attend the CU Events Center this weekend. The reunion weekend will include private events starting Friday and going all the way through Sunday's game. The Halftime of Friday's game will recognize all the alumni in attendance along with the '93 team. Sunday's halftime will be dedicated especially to the '93 Elite Eight.

The current Buffs and the alumni will have a chance to mix on Saturday, with an ice cream social scheduled around the team's practice.

"We've been pushing hard with our alums of connecting the past with our present," Sheetz noted. "We want former players telling the stories of how awesome things were for them and their experiences and the trials and tribulations that every student-athlete goes through. These players need to hear that and I'm excited for those stories to be shared this weekend."

The first 200 fans through the doors at the CU Events Center on Friday will get a voucher for a women's basketball tumbler.

Both games this weekend are on the Pac-12 Networks. Cory Lopez and Carol Callan will have the call on the Colorado Radio Network, the Varsity app and CUBuffs.com/Listen. Pregame coverage starts 30 minutes before tip-off.

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