Six reasons for Colorado State's spectacular November
A team of the mountains takes off for the stratosphere
Having just written yesterday about Feast Week being a bit overrated (Jon Fendler did the same at his Substack), it is probably pretty rich to be writing about a team whose stock has never been higher thanks to Feast Week. Colorado State won an MTE with Boston College and top-10 Creighton in it, finishing their preseason off by smoking said Creighton team by 21. Shooting luck was involved, but you can’t tell that to the average non-viewer.
Colorado State now sits top-30 in KenPom. A proper split of efficiency + resume has them as a low-end top-25 team, probably. Worse yet, they’ve been catapulted into the top 20 of the AP Poll. One writer even has them 9th! Do what you want, of course, but perhaps we’re being a little hasty based on one game.
…or perhaps we’re not. ShotQuality, generally pretty skeptical of sudden risers, has Colorado State in its top 40. Torvik says they’ve played like the 21st-best team in the sport to date. While their rise is at least partially driven by some unsustainable shooting metrics both ways (a +11% 3PT gap, a +15.3% eFG% gap overall), they legitimately look like an NCAA Tournament team before December even hits.
How did we get here? While CSU was quite good in 2021-22 with David Roddy wearing their uniform, Roddy is no longer there. Neither are three of last year’s starters from a team that went 15-18 and finished outside the KenPom top 100. Sudden year-over-year rises happen every season, but this is a unique story specific to the Rams. Paying tribute to each of their six wins so far, here’s six reasons why Colorado State has turned itself into a Mountain West contender and, at worst, one of the 30-35 best teams in the sport.
BELOW THE LINE ($): A better group of Rams than the NFL’s