Wyoming men’s basketball has a different look, a different feel and a different mentality.
The phrase being uttered over and over again by the coaches and the players is “culture change.”
Wyoming basketball, since head coach Larry Shyatt’s return, has undergone a major renovation on and off the court, and the fans are finally beginning to see the entire picture.
“It has been an interesting change of culture,” senior forward Larry Nance Jr. said. “You can see what we are building now.”
Each player on the roster is a Shyatt recruit. All the way up to the three seniors that took a leap of faith with Shyatt when he returned to Laramie prior to the 2011-2012 season to build a foundation for years to come.
“These three guys took a chance on Wyoming,” Shaytt said. “They took a chance on us three and a half years ago. The culture is now laid.”
A foundation that has created an unfamiliar word to fans: expectations.
They return the defensive player of the year in the Mountain West, first team selection and preseason player of the year Larry Nance Jr.
They welcome a very talented freshman class filled with players that could have gone to the likes of Utah, Washington State, Saint Joseph’s, LaSalle and Gonzaga. Instead they decided not to take a leap of faith like those three seniors did three years ago, but to buy in to a winning culture that Shyatt is constructing at Wyoming.
They have attracted the attention and garnered the appeal of incoming recruits from all corners of the country and even the globe.
“We have good mix of kids [here now and coming next year] from Florida, California, Colorado, Sweden everywhere,” Nance said.
They have gone away from a weaker non-conference that featured one or two NCAA Tournament teams i.e., Colorado and Denver to a slate that has four or five NCAA Tournament teams on it i.e., Colorado, SMU, Cal, New Mexico State and Denver. A schedule that will make them more battle tested for the bigger games in March.
They are being mentioned in the same breath as Mountain West powerhouses San Diego State, UNLV and New Mexico.
They are being taken off schedules of opponents that do not want to face the pain staking defensive mentality of the Cowboys. I am looking at you Colorado.
They are the “new-look” Cowboys they are winners and it all started three years ago with Larry Nance Jr., Riley Grabau and Jack Bentz.
“They have put us in position to be in position,” Shyatt said. “I want to chase a championship at Wyoming. We want to get to the Dance (NCAA Tournament) too.”
