Nuggets with NCAA Tournament ties and memories

Trash talk was circulating in the Nuggets’ practice gym early this week after the bracket was unveiled.

Three of the No. 1 seeds in the 2026 NCAA Tournament were schools attended by a current Nuggets player. March Madness had arrived with plenty of championship ambition inside Ball Arena.

“I think they’ll win,” Aaron Gordon said when asked about his former team, Arizona, which entered the tournament with a 32-2 record. “They’ve got really good guards. Got some good wings. Got some rebounding. They’ve lost  already, you know what I mean? So they’re not going into the first round of the tournament with the undefeated pressure. So they’ve got a good chance of winning.”

“AG doesn’t even watch Arizona,” Nuggets guard Christian Braun retorted. “Go ask AG to name three players on the team.”

Braun, as it happened, was the primary source of that trash talk. A proud and occasionally obnoxious Kansas alum, he’s one of the most avid college basketball followers on Denver’s roster. On Monday, he was already looking ahead to a potential second-round matchup between Kansas and St. John’s, claiming that “we have the best coach in the world” in Bill Self, “so I don’t really doubt us.”

When Bruce Brown was asked for his thoughts on Miami’s first-round draw against Missouri the next night, Braun interrupted with his: “They’ve got the weakest team in the NCAA,” he said, despite his mother having played at Mizzou. “You should beat Missouri.”

“I don’t know anything about Mizzou,” Brown murmured to his teammate. “I don’t watch —”

“Nobody does,” a deadpan Braun fired back. “Nobody watches them.”

(It bears mentioning that by this point, his insults seemed to be directed at the inquiring #MizzouMade Nuggets beat writer.)

Not everyone in the NBA keeps track of their college team quite as fervently as Braun — Jamal Murray has been known to lose track of who’s left by the Final Four — but March Madness does have a tendency to capture the attention of the basketball world, even for those who are generally locked in on just the pros.

The Nuggets have a particularly robust list of alma maters on the current team. They recently added another blueblood to that list when they signed Final Four hero Tyus Jones off the buyout market. Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, Arizona, Gonzaga and Michigan are among the schools now represented on Denver’s roster.

In celebration of this year’s tournament, The Denver Post reassembled that roster into a new hierarchy based only on the success of each player’s college hoops career — an All-NCAA Nuggets starting lineup and second unit, if you will. (Sorry, Nikola Jokic. Looks like you’re the first roster cut.)

There was no perfect way to make some of these decisions, especially given Denver’s surplus of prolific college guards and shortage of bigs. It becomes kind of difficult to sort out a frontcourt when the real-life Nuggets’ top two centers spent their developmental years playing for European clubs.

But we tried anyway. Ultimately, the final decisions skewed in favor of players who:

A) contributed to successful NCAA Tournament teams.

B) enjoyed longer, more established college careers.

Here goes nothing.

Duke’s Tyus Jones (5) reacts following his basket against Notre Dame during the first half of a game in Durham, N.C., Saturday, Feb. 7, 2015. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
Starters

PG: Tyus Jones, Duke (2014-15)

SG: Tim Hardaway Jr., Michigan (2010-13)

SF: Christian Braun, Kansas (2019-22)

PF: Cam Johnson, Pittsburgh/North Carolina (2014-19)

C: DaRon Holmes II, Dayton (2021-24)

Jones is the only “one-and-done” player to make the starting five. How can you leave him out? He was named NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 2015 after taking over the national championship game. His 23 points led Duke’s comeback from down nine with 12 minutes to go against Wisconsin. The Blue Devils have fielded several super-teams since 2015, but that remains their last championship squad.

Braun was also part of a memorable NCAA title game in 2022, when his 12-point double-double helped the Jayhawks erase a 15-point halftime deficit against North Carolina. For Braun, that was the culmination of a three-year, 101-game career at Kansas.

Hardaway had a similar career arc at Michigan, where he quickly earned a starting role under John Beilein and eventually co-starred with Trey Burke on a 2011-12 team that won the regular-season conference title and on a 2012-13 team that reached the championship game. Hardaway was a First-Team All-Big 10 selection that year. The Wolverines may have fallen short against No. 1 overall seed Louisville, but THJ’s thunderous second-half dunk is one of the enduring moments from an awesome game.

Only three current Nuggets made an Associated Press All-American team while in college. Holmes earned Second Team honors his third and final year at Dayton, when he led the Atlantic 10 in points (20.4) and rebounds (8.5) while averaging 2.1 blocks and shooting 39% from three. It’s perhaps the best individual college season anyone on Denver’s roster has had. Holmes led the Flyers to a No. 7 seed and an NCAA Tournament win.

Johnson remains an avid fan of his Tar Heels, which could cause some chemistry issues with Jones in this unit. But if Holmes is the five, you can’t have a four-guard lineup. The pride of Duke and Carolina will have to sort out their differences. Johnson spent the last two seasons of college in Chapel Hill. As a fifth-year senior, he led UNC to a No. 1 seed and a Sweet 16 appearance, making First Team All-ACC and leading all power conference players in 3-point percentage (45.7%). He shot 40.5% from deep across his career, scoring 1,514 points between his two schools.

amal Murray of the Kentucky Wildcats celebrates in the game against the LSU Tigers at Rupp Arena on March 5, 2016 in Lexington, Kentucky. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Bench

PG: Jalen Pickett, Siena/Penn State (2018-23)

SG: Jamal Murray, Kentucky (2015-16)

SF: Julian Strawther, Gonzaga (2020-23)

PF: Aaron Gordon, Arizona (2013-14)

C: Zeke Nnaji, Arizona (2019-20)

Pickett and Murray are going to have to be high-usage early subs for the All-NCAA Nuggets. They deserve to be starters, but we’re not playing completely position-less basketball here. Although Murray’s lone season at Kentucky ended early in March, he was still a 20-point-per-game lottery pick and a Third-Team AP All-American alongside Tyler Ulis.

Pickett was a delightful college point guard to watch. Like Holmes, he was a Second-Team All-American for a non-blueblood program. He flirted with a triple-double in an NCAA Tournament win for Penn State, amassing 19 points, seven boards and eight assists. He had a 40-point game at both of his schools. Long live “Booty Ball.”

If you were to edit together a “One Shining Moment” video of the Nuggets’ best March Madness highlights, Strawther’s game-winning shot in the Sweet 16 would probably be the main feature. “Down one, to shoot it from the logo, it was a questionable shot,” he admitted to The Denver Post when reflecting on it a couple of years later. Nonetheless, his 35-footer cemented another March classic between Gonzaga and UCLA. When he was a freshman, Strawther also rode the bench for a Gonzaga squad that lost to Baylor in the championship game.

A pair of one-and-done Arizona Wildcats will fill out Denver’s frontcourt. Gordon and Nnaji were both named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year in their brief college careers. They were both First-Team All-Pac-12. Gordon’s team fell one point short of a trip to the Final Four.

Honorable mentions

Props to two-way guard KJ Simpson for his first-round game-winner for Colorado a couple of years ago. Also to Brown (Miami) and Curtis Jones (Iowa State), both of whom made multiple NCAA Tournaments. Again, this backcourt is cutthroat.

Water boy

The All-NCAA Nuggets can probably spare Jokic a spot behind the bench. Certainly not on the court. You expect a 41st overall pick to play?