Buffs Begin New Era This Weekend

Friday, November 11

Greeley, Colo.

7:00 PM

Colorado

Northern Colorado

JR Payne (background) and Toriano Towns (foreground) work with senior Zoe Beard-Fails during a recent practice.

Photo by: CUBuffs.com

November 10, 2016 | Women's Basketball

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By: Andy Schlichting, Assistant SID

BOULDER - A new era of Colorado basketball begins this weekend as the women's squad opens the 2016-17 season with two games. CU opens the year on the road on Friday at Northern Colorado before returning to Boulder for the home opener on Sunday for a 2 p.m. tip against Air Force.

Following Sunday's game against Air Force, there will be a free youth clinic for students in eighth grade and younger. Register your child at CUBuffs.com/WBBclinic.

JR Payne enters her first season as head coach of the Buffs and has a history of turning around programs quickly in her two previous stops. She has been a collegiate head coach for seven seasons at Southern Utah and Santa Clara. Both times she inherited struggling programs that averaged 9.5 wins in the season prior to her arrival. In her final season at each stop, her teams averaged 23 wins.

"We're thrilled to be starting our games at Colorado as a new coaching staff and we're excited to build our program and see what we can do," Payne said.

Her coaching staff includes her husband Toriano Towns, who is the associate head coach. He has been on Payne's staff at Southern Utah and Santa Clara, and will be in charge of the team's defense.

Payne also brought Shandrika Lee with her from Santa Clara. Lee has also been an assistant at Oregon and Army.

Jeff Cammon rounds out the on-court coaching staff and he brings Pac-12 experience, spending past two seasons at California. He has also spent time on the staff at Long Beach State.

Alex Earl is the team's director of player development and spent a year with Payne at Santa Clara and a year at Lamar Community College after her playing career at Arizona State. Jill Mahoney joins the group as the director of operations following her time at Western State in Gunnison, Colo.

The new group has jelled well so far and is looking forward to playing real games for the first time together.

"We are very excited to start on Friday, for real," Payne said. "We've been playing against each other, beating up on each other for several months now so we're real excited to be playing against great in-state opponents like Northern Colorado and Air Force. They're both programs that are real good and have new coaches that have a year or two under their belt and are really growing and developing their programs. We expect really tough, gritty games from both opponents."

CU returns nine of 10 letterwinners from last season and will be led by sophomores Kennedy Leonard and Alexis Robinson, and seniors Haley Smith and Lauren Huggins. Leonard earned Pac-12 All-Freshman honors last season and Robinson averaged 7.6 points, while starting 20 games as a freshman. Smith averaged 10.7 points and 5.7 rebounds last year. Huggins, who has been limited in practice this fall with an injury, averaged 7.2 points in 2015-16.