{"id":257254,"date":"2026-05-04T03:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T03:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/257254\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T03:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T03:14:07","slug":"colorado-lacrosse-hosts-jacksonville-in-ncaa-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/257254\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado lacrosse hosts Jacksonville in NCAA Tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NCAA Tournament drought is over for the Colorado women\u2019s lacrosse team.<\/p>\n<p>The Buffaloes secured an automatic bid to the 29-team field by defeating No. 4 Florida in the Big 12 Conference championship game on Saturday, and on Sunday evening that bid became official as CU received the eighth seed and a first-round matchup against Jacksonville on Friday at Prentup Field (4 p.m., ESPN+).<\/p>\n<p>The tournament\u2019s top eight seeds get to play at home, and the Buffs inched into the eighth spot after extending their winning streak to seven games with the win at Florida in the Big 12 title game.<\/p>\n<p>It is the fourth NCAA Tournament berth in the program\u2019s 13-season history, but the first since a run of three consecutive tournament appearances between 2017 and 2019. It is the first time the Buffs will host.<\/p>\n<p>CU (14-3) finished 5-3 against teams in the tournament field, including a season-opening win at top-seeded Northwestern. The Buffs are unbeaten at home this season (7-0), and the winner between the Buffs and Jacksonville will play either Florida or Denver in the second round on Sunday at Prentup.<\/p>\n<p>Florida and Denver will play in the first opening-round game at Prentup on Friday afternoon. The Buffs posted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailycamera.com\/2026\/04\/06\/colorado-buffaloes-lacrosse-rowan-edson-jacksonville\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a 10-9 win in overtime at Jacksonville on April 6<\/a>, a victory that started the ongoing seven-game winning streak.<\/p>\n<p>CU and the Dolphins have met once previously in the NCAA Tournament, with the Buffs defeating Jacksonville in the first round of the 2018 tournament at Florida.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels so great for this program. Not just this team, but my past few teams that worked really hard and we just missed it (the NCAA Tournament) by one thing,\u201d CU head coach Ann Elliott Whidden said. \u201cReally since 2021, every year we\u2019re like one thing away from getting\u00a0 there, which has been frustrating in many ways and deflating as the coach of this program. So to be able this year to find a way to avoid those things and just a way to get it done is huge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo win down in Gainesville and come away with the Big 12 championship and know we were going to be in it is a great feeling for this program.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NCAA Tournament drought is over for the Colorado women\u2019s lacrosse team. The Buffaloes secured an automatic bid&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[53449,100328,100329,111,100327,16516,16519,48181,116,118,117,114,266,115,110],"class_list":["post-257254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-boulder","tag-boulder-county","tag-buffzone","tag-college-sports","tag-college-lacrosse","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-news","tag-front-range","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}