BOULDER — It’s a new-look team this sea­son, but the bar remains the same for CU women’s basketball.

Com­ing off three straight NCAA Tour­na­ment appear­ances and con­sec­u­tive Sweet 16 trips, the Buffs have 10 fresh faces on the ros­ter with the sea­son set to begin on Sunday.

JR Payne, in her ninth year at the helm, believes the Buffs have the fire­pow­er to get back to the tour­na­ment once again com­ing off CU’s third straight 20-win sea­son that fea­tured three vic­to­ries over Top 10 opponents.

“We have bet­ter depth than we’ve ever had, we’re longer than we’ve ever been, and we’re a very expe­ri­enced group, even if that’s not expe­ri­ence here at Col­orado,” Payne said. “… We have the same expec­ta­tions we always have… and we’re very for­tu­nate to have strong vet­er­an lead­ers, even though there’s not a lot of them.”

Senior point guard Kindyll Wet­ta is set to assume the bulk of the point guard duties fol­low­ing the grad­u­a­tion of star Jay­lyn Sher­rod, who just won the WNBA title as a rook­ie with the New York Lib­er­ty. Wet­ta, a Val­or Chris­t­ian prod­uct, played every game the past three seasons.

The two oth­er famil­iar vet­er­ans on CU’s ros­ter are grad­u­ate sharp­shoot­ing guard Fri­da For­mann (four-year starter) as well as fifth-year guard Sara-Rose Smith, who trans­ferred last year from Mis­souri and came off the bench. For­mann owns the school record for career 3‑pointers with 260, and in 2023–24 also tied the program’s sin­gle-sea­son mark for 3s with 82.

Beyond that, fans should prob­a­bly have their ros­ters on their laps for the open­er against Col­orado School of Mines at 1 p.m. Sun­day at the CU Events Center.

That ros­ter turnover is large­ly why the Buffs were picked to fin­ish ninth out of 16 teams in the Big 12 women’s bas­ket­ball pre­sea­son poll. But Payne is much more optimistic.

“On paper, if you didn’t real­ly do your research on who we signed in the spring and the fresh­men we had com­ing in, I think I would’ve picked us ninth too,” Payne said. “But I know our team much bet­ter than most, and I def­i­nite­ly think we’ll fin­ish much high­er than ninth.”

The Buffs are tied for the sec­ond-most new­com­ers in the nation, accord­ing to CU ath­let­ics, and are the only NCAA Tour­na­ment team from last year with dou­ble-dig­it newcomers.

But despite los­ing start­ing cen­ter Aaronette Von­leh via trans­fer to Bay­lor, CU reloaded in the por­tal and fea­tures a true fresh­man capa­ble of mak­ing an imme­di­ate impact in Tabitha Bet­son. The for­ward was tabbed as the Big 12 pre­sea­son fresh­man of the year.

Beyond Bet­son, an array of trans­fers are expect­ed to contribute.

For­ward Lior Gar­zon start­ed every game last sea­son for Okla­homa State, while for­ward Nyamer Diew start­ed 19 games for Iowa State and for­ward Ayian­na John­son played in 31 games for Min­neso­ta. For­ward Jade Maso­gayo was a two-year starter at Mis­souri State. And guard Johan­na Ted­er, a 3‑point threat, was a three-year starter at Wash­ing­ton State before miss­ing 2023–24 with an Achilles injury.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent type of team, but we’re still Col­orado bas­ket­ball, and it’s still JR’s sys­tem and her mind behind it, and still (asso­ciate head coach Tori­ano Towns’) mind behind our defense,” For­mann said. “It’s all the same prin­ci­ples, it’s just dif­fer­ent per­son­nel. It’s going to be a real­ly fun look. We can real­ly spread the floor with shoot­ers, we can play super fast, and we’ll be able to play real­ly good team basketball.”

With For­mann as the head­lin­er, CU’s ros­ter has a decid­ed­ly world­ly com­po­si­tion, with eight inter­na­tion­al play­ers set­ting a pro­gram record.

Payne said that ros­ter make­up is part­ly by design, with the Buffs’ coach­ing staff scour­ing tapes from abroad to find hid­den gems in Europe, Aus­tralia and else­where, and part­ly by chance.

“For the sys­tem we run, it’s a stroke of luck we end­ed up with so many inter­na­tion­al play­ers,” Payne said. “And it’s not so much inter­na­tion­al, but the expe­ri­ence (they come with) — peo­ple who have had a lot of dif­fer­ent bas­ket­ball expe­ri­ences, whether that was over­seas with their nation­al teams or some­one like Sara-Rose who won a bronze medal play­ing 3‑on‑3 with Team Australia.

“But some of these play­ers we’ve also recruit­ed before — like we’ve known Lior since high school, we’ve known (6‑foot‑5 Niger­ian for­ward) JoJo Nworie since her fresh­man year at (South­ern Ida­ho). So when those play­ers went into the trans­fer por­tal, it made sense for us to try to get them.”

Now the ques­tion is who’s going to get the bulk of the play­ing time?

Wet­ta and For­mann are obvi­ous starters, although For­mann had a boot on her right foot at Monday’s media day and said she is day-to-day with an undis­closed injury. Smith also fig­ures to gar­ner sig­nif­i­cant time.

Beyond that, Payne said she still doesn’t have a set start­ing line­up and that the Buffs will use their 12-game non-con­fer­ence sched­ule, which includes matchups against Wyoming, North­ern Col­orado and Den­ver, to fig­ure out the rota­tion. That means much of the ros­ter will see min­utes in the preseason.

“We’re very hope­ful for this sea­son, and we have very high expec­ta­tions,” Wet­ta said. “The goal is to always meet that expec­ta­tion, or sur­pass it, and we can def­i­nite­ly do that. But right now we’re focused on work­ing out the kinks (in the line­up) and mak­ing sure we’re all on the same page in the first few games of the sea­son. If we do that, we’ll be fine come time for Big 12 play and the postseason.”

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