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Basketball is a game of pivoting: offense to defense, moving in and out of the paint. The best of the best find a way to pivot in the right direction.
Brihanna Crittendon, the newest member of Colorado basketball royalty, has done just that, finding a rhythm in her journey to become the all-time leading scorer in Colorado high school basketball history. She’s currently at 2,983 and counting.
How did she do it? By keeping a positive mindset and having fun, something that has proven pivotal during her career.
Early on, as a fifth grader playing with eighth graders, there was a moment when she felt that quitting was the only option.
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“I was like, This is not fun anymore,” Brihanna says. “My dad made sure I persevered. I think that’s when I gained my positive mindset, because there were two paths. I could have quit or kept working.”
Time after time, when facing adversity, Brihanna found a way to make the most of the moment. Her sophomore year showed her what it takes to be a champion. “We lost to Roosevelt by 30,” she says. “We were supposed to go out there and win, but we lost by 30 at home.”
In that moment, Brihanna and her teammates at Riverdale Ridge knew it couldn’t define their season. “I was a little upset, but we learned from it as a team,” Crittendon says. “We had a lot of talking after the game just to get together and make sure we were on the same page.”
That mindset paid off later in the season, when Riverdale Ridge faced Roosevelt just before the state tournament. “We played them again at the end of the season,” she says, “and beat them by 20.”
Riverdale Ridge carried that momentum through the postseason and won the state championship, a turnaround that started by learning how to pivot.
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The 6-3 forward found her way back to the gym, refining her game with no one watching. A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier and Satou Sabally provided inspiration as she shaped her own style and grew into the player she is today.
The summer of ’25 was another key moment. Brihanna traveled across the world with Jason Kidd’s select club team, learning from the best while continuing to deepen her understanding of the game. “I learned a lot. That session of basketball—it was straight basketball for probably two-and-a-half months,” she says. “There was a lot of training. I met a lot of new people. It was definitely hard, but amazing.”
The SLAM Summer Classic Vol. 7 alum showed exactly why she was chosen to the elite class, dancing in the paint, finding putbacks and making plays for others. Brihanna is a three-level scorer and two-way player who has developed a game that can fit into nearly any system. It makes her next step feel like a natural one as the five-star prepares to join Vic Schaefer and Madison Booker in Austin.
“I’m gonna be able to play with other amazing, great players, which was one of my goals, just to surround myself with like-minded people,” Crittendon says. “I’m gonna have a bunch of upperclassmen to look up to that are, honestly, gonna go play in the WNBA.”
She joins a Texas program that is also building momentum, recently winning its first SEC Tournament championship in just its second season in the conference.
“I’m super excited about it, and we’re gonna have a good freshman class next year,” Crittendon says. “We’re gonna be great. It’s just super exciting to see what the future looks like.”
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