Colorado State University Athletics
ESPN's Katz: Rams on the Rise
10/18/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Oct. 18, 2010
Click here to view Katz’s Blog
By Danny Mattie
Athletic Media Relations
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Just four days into practice, expectations are high for the Colorado State men’s basketball team. And now, it seems, those expectations have moved beyond the coaches, players and Moby Arena faithful.
Andy Katz, senior college basketball writer for ESPN.com, used his blog on the national Web site to tab the Rams as a team “on the rise” under Head Coach Tim Miles, who enters his fourth year at the helm of the CSU program.
Katz says the Rams will have an opportunity in 2010-11 to crack the upper echelon of the Mountain West Conference and could be in the mix come tourney time, vying for an NCAA berth in a strong league that received four bids the year before.
The Rams who have improved each season since Miles’ first, posted a 16-16 mark in 2009-10, and finished tied with Utah for fifth place in the Mountain West Conference. The team earned its first postseason bid in seven seasons, participating in the 2010 College Basketball Invitational, but Miles and his players know that the Rams are far from where they want to be.
The Rams will have to make strides once again to take on the MWC’s top four teams, all of whom return a lot of talent with NCAA tournament experience.
"We can talk about it until we're blue in the face, but we have to beat those guys [in the top part of the league]," Miles told Katz. "I was hired to raise the bar. We're not where I want to be."
Colorado State was selected to finish fifth in the MWC preseason poll, the team’s highest preseason selection since 2004. That season, the Rams were coming off of a Mountain West Conference tournament championship, and the program’s last NCAA tournament appearance.
