Northern Colorado makes meteoric rise to NCAA tourney berth

GREELEY, Colo.  Four years ago, after the University of Northern Colorado men's basketball team finished 4-24 and, worse, dead last in the NCAA Ratings percentage Index with an RPI of 336, then-head coach Tad Boyle printed those numbers on a piece of paper and made copies for every player and coach.

The players taped them inside their lockers.

"We looked at it every day as we were going to weights, going to practice," UNC guard Devon Beitzel says. "We didn't want to be there. That's no place for any team."

All the way from that place, the UNC Bears arrived Wednesday night, winning the Big Sky tournament with a victory against defending champion Montana for the school's first-ever NCAA bid. They could end up being the only first-timers in this year's NCAA field.

"It's crazy to think that we're here, where we are today, after where we came from," says Greeley native and UNC forward Neal Kingman, who, like Beitzel, is one of four senior starters to experience the no-chance to let's-dance turnaround. "Honestly, after our freshman year, I was like, I don't know if this is for me. I had second thoughts, there's no doubt about it. But it was almost a blessing in disguise, because now we get to take that much more enjoyment in today."

In 2006-07, UNC joined the Big Sky, marking the Bears' first full season in Division I and Boyle's first season as a head coach.

Under Boyle, who won a state championship starring at Greeley Central High, the Bears more than tripled their win total in 2007-08 and amassed the most wins in school history (25) last season.

In April, Boyle left to be head coach at the University of Colorado. UNC named assistant coach B.J. Hill to replace him the same day.

"He told us the day he got the job that our goal was to settle for nothing less than the conference championship," Kingman says.

No step back, in other words. Instead, the next step.

"I had a lot of faith," says Hill, 37, a first-time head coach. "I'm a firm believer that if you as a a coach don't believe something, these guys are going to see right through it. I knew what this team was going to be capable of."

Colorado native Beitzel became the Big Sky player of the year, averaging a conference-best 21.4 points. Against Montana, he scored 13 of his game-high 27 points in the final five minutes.

The Bears went 14-0 at home this season. The players, who remember playing in front of home crowds that numbered in the low hundreds just four years ago, reveled in seeing hours-long lines for tickets outside the arena and standing-room-only crowds inside.

"I heard the dorms were loud all night," junior forward Mike Proctor says with pride.

One fan who couldn't be there — Boyle — says he set aside time Wednesday to watch the Big Sky championship game, despite preparing his own team for Thursday's victory against Kansas State in the Big 12 quarterfinals in Kansas City, Mo.

"They're my second-favorite team, behind the Colorado Buffaloes, in college basketball," Boyle says.

The Buffaloes are likely to join UNC in the NCAA tournament. Hill recalls that just three years ago, a Denver newspaper ran a story deeming Colorado "a wasteland" for college basketball.

Hill can now file that in the same folder he keeps that piece of paper with "4-24" and "336" printed on it. As of this week, it's history.

"I'm going to have to find a new way to motivate them," he says of his players.

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Contributing: Steve Wieberg in Kansas City, Mo.