With 7:23 remaining in the first half, Wyoming Cowboys senior guard Jordan Nesbitt patiently awaited a screen from big man Oleg Kojenets at the top of the key. Before Kojenets could even plant his feet to set the screen, Nesbitt would break loose, bursting past the defending Texas Tech sophomore guard Kevin Overton on his way to a crafty finish at the rim.
While the move was impressive, the Cowboys, up to that point, were very much less than impressive. That move capped off a dry spell of 9:21 in which the Cowboys did not score a single field goal. To add salt to the wound, that bucket would be Nesbitt’s only made shot of the entire night. The Cowboys as a whole struggled to find the bottom of the basket in this one as a team and even had more turnovers on the night than made field goals.
By the time the first half expired, this one was pretty well out of reach for the Cowboys, as a 26 point deficit stared them down at the break.
Head coach Sundance Wicks was at the top of the list of people who were vastly disappointed by the Cowboys’ 96-49 end result to the Red Raiders.
“If there’s one thing you can learn from me, it’s that you better show up to every game with passion to do your job. And I thought we were very passionless tonight. Didn’t show up to the fight,” Wicks said postgame.
The numbers, as one would expect in a result such as this, were extremely ugly for the Cowboys. With only 18 made field goals in the contest and 25 turnovers, the Cowboys more often found themselves sprinting down the other end of the court to attempt to stop the Red Raiders’ transition offense than the Red Raiders were taking the ball out from under their own basket. The Red Raiders gladly traded those 25 turnovers into 40 points.
“As I told the guys, 25 turnovers isn’t coaching unless I call a terrible after timeout play and make you throw a bad pass,” Wicks said of his team’s turnovers.
“You have to do a better job handling pressure.”
Pressure defense is already something the Cowboys have struggled with immensely in their opening trio of games this season. The Cowboys recorded 11 turnovers against the Tennessee State Tigers in their previous outing, and while that number seems like nothing in comparison to the amount of turnovers they had against the Red Raiders, many of those turnovers against the Tigers were in the Tigers’ second half comeback effort where they erased a 20 point Cowboy lead to just six.
The Red Raiders also made a living down in the paint, as New Mexico transfer JT Toppin, who the Cowboys were all too familiar with playing in the Mountain West a year ago, dominated the paint with a double-double 24 points and 12 rebounds.
JT strikes first ‼️ pic.twitter.com/K0IyH7QMtI
— Texas Tech Basketball (@TexasTechMBB) November 14, 2024
“He’s got length, he’s got athleticism, he’s got skill and he plays within himself,” Wicks said of Toppin. “That’s a good test, I don’t know if there’s a lot of bigs out there like JT Toppin that we’ll play, but I sure hope I don’t run into him again anytime soon.”
While the Red Raiders’ rebounding edge was slim at 35-29, their presence in the paint itself heavily outmatched the Cowboys’, as the Red Raiders scored 44 points in the paint to the Cowboys’ 24.
The only shining light for the Cowboys in their abysmal performance against the Red Raiders likely lies within point guard Obi Agbim, who finished the night as the only Cowboy in double figures with 15 points. Still, the crafty playmaker was one of the biggest turnover culprits for the Cowboys, as the senior also finished the night with six turnovers to just two assists.
“It was good when he settled in, right? I thought [he] was a little erratic there at the start,” Wicks said of Agbim’s performance.
While there may be a lot of things the Cowboys can take away from the film of tonight’s contest, one thing is for certain after the blowout loss: the Cowboys need to clean their game up, and bring the juice back this Saturday when they take on Utah Tech.
“If I don’t see a passionate response on Saturday, then I’ll probably have to shorten this bench a little bit [and] play the guys who are willing to give us everything they got. That’s the message,” Wicks said.
“This team is not a team that’s supposed to lose by 50, in my opinion. But I also know our ceiling is really high, but I also know our floor is really low right now.”
