Growing up in Denmark, Frida Formann watched a lot of college basketball while dreaming of one day playing in the NCAA Tournament.

In joining the Colorado women’s basketball team in the summer of 2020, however, she had no idea if her dreams would become a reality.

“When you leave your country to go play over here, you don’t really know what’s going to happen and how it’s going to end up,” Formann said. “You just kind of take a chance on the program and I’m just really happy to be here with this program today.”

The CU program is filled with players like Formann who took a chance on a team that, frankly, wasn’t very good a few years ago. Head coach JR Payne and her staff, however, have built a program on a foundation that could last a while.

CU (25-9) had its season come to a close on March 24 with a Sweet 16 loss to Iowa — which will play in the national title game against LSU on Sunday — but that loss feels more like another stepping stone for the Buffs than the end of a great run.

“Our biggest thing would be just knowing and teaching our new players that we can always get better and that we’re never — not to say we’re never good enough, but trying to keep that mentality just so we’re never (too satisfied),” said senior center Quay Miller, who announced on Friday that she’ll return for the 2023-24 season. “We celebrated (wins), but it was always like, ‘OK, so these are the areas we can get better at.’”

Under Payne, who this week signed a new five-year contract through the 2027-28 season, the Buffs have continued to get better. From 2014-20, CU finished in the bottom four of the Pac-12 in seven consecutive seasons. Since then, the Buffs have finished sixth, fifth and third.

At the core of Payne’s program are strong relationships. Associate head coach Toriano Towns is Payne’s husband and throughout her seven seasons as CU’s head coach, she’s had remarkable continuity with her entire staff. Only two assistants have left, both on good terms for better career opportunities and both remain close with Payne.

A family-oriented atmosphere has helped to create strong team chemistry, as well.

“I read somewhere, somebody said the teams that win in March are the ones with the best chemistry,” Payne said. “If you’re still playing in March, you’re talented enough to win in March. But, it’s the teams with chemistry and leadership.

“I actually thought about our team when I read that and thought that’s probably pretty true because we did have great chemistry. We did have a really unselfish group, we did have great leadership. When you can kind of put all that on the table with enough talent and enough healthy players, I think that’s when you win.”

Team chemistry changes every year with players moving in and out, but each of the Buffs’ past three or four teams have pointed to chemistry being a strength of the team. Being able to have good chemistry year after year is a testament to the foundation Payne and her staff have set.

Also at the core of CU’s success is a collection of players who took a chance on CU because CU took a chance on them.

“Some of these kids have scars, man, and battle wounds and they’ve been through something and that sense of adversity in their life or in their process helps to connect them to our culture and to our philosophy,” Towns said. “Aaronette (Vonleh) has got something to prove. Tay Jones has something to prove. Quay Miller has something to prove. Jaylyn Sherrod has something to prove. Kindyll Wetta has something to prove. When you get enough of those kids in a room, and they look each other eye to eye and they’re saying, ‘All right, let’s go,’ that fits with who we are.

“We’ve got a bunch of rottweilers and pit bulls.”

CU talks about a “will over skill” mentality. None of the Buffs were high school All-Americans, but they’ve established a culture of hard work.

“This being my first year here, I quickly learned that is their identity,” said Vonleh, who transferred to CU from Arizona last summer. “Our whole team works so hard that it’s like if you aren’t working as hard as people around you, you’re gonna get left behind, so they kind of just raise the bar to make everybody better.”

Mixing good chemistry, a chip on the shoulder and a strong work ethic has allowed CU to develop another essential element to success: Belief.

Payne, Towns and others on staff came to Boulder for an opportunity to restore glory to a once-proud CU program. Then, they recruited players who saw the vision.

“I mean, you have to dream,” said Sherrod, who arrived in 2019, with CU coming off a last-place finish in the Pac-12. “We weren’t guaranteed the NCAA Tournament. We weren’t even guaranteed an NIT bid. I think this team does a great job of knowing what we want to get to, but not always focusing on the big picture because we know it’s the little things in between that’s gonna get us there.

“I think for me, you have to dream and you have to believe in it because we believed it when nobody else did. I think that’s just the mentality of this team.”

None of it happened overnight. There were many of tough moments along the way, including a 58-point loss at Oregon in the second Pac-12 game Sherrod ever played, on Jan. 3, 2020.

Over time, CU has leaned on its core values and characteristics to convert those tough moments into learning experiences. That, in turn, has lifted the program back to national prominence.

The timing couldn’t be better for the Buffs.

New head football coach Deion Sanders has shined a light on CU nationally. And, Payne’s squad showed future recruits and possible transfers that football isn’t the only exciting team on campus.

“With coach Prime, the visibility of Colorado’s brand has really blossomed in the last few months,” Payne said. “And then our visibility being in the Sweet 16, on that national stage is so important for young players to see, whether that’s high school kids or potential transfers.

“People want to go somewhere that’s known and that has heightened expectations and has been successful — a program that’s going somewhere.”

Payne’s program is certainly going somewhere and the nation got to know the Buffs during their sensational 2022-23 campaign.

“We’re tough, we’re blue-collar, we work hard,” Payne said. “It’s not easy, but you’ll be loved and supported and challenged and all of our players came here knowing that. I think we’ve created an identity where we do play really hard, we are really gritty, but players are in that space where they can be who they want to be in our program.

“We love who we are, we love the players that are here and it just works for us.”