The Wyoming Cowboys were already down 11 within the first two and half minutes of the Cowboys’ 176th meeting on the hardwood against the BYU Cougars in a neutral site contest. Their first three opening possessions of the first half contributed to nearly all those points. This one looked like it was going to get real ugly, real fast for the Cowboys.
Add on that the Delta Center, home of the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City, is less than an hour from Provo, where BYU is located, and this game was certainly more of a road game than a neutral site game. Things were not going to be easy for the Cowboys to find their first road game of the season, especially with how this one started.
“It’s an away game, right? This is the fifth game away from home that we’ve had in a stretch which we’ve intentionally challenged our guys, we got to go through this,” head coach Sundance Wicks said of the Cowboys’ recent stretch of road games.
This torrent start was a familiar tune for the Cowboys, who have not been strangers to a rough start out the gate this season. During the Cowboys’ stint in Cancun, which spurred the beginning of their four game skid after this more recent loss, the Cowboys found themselves down 16 points in comeback efforts in both their games there.
However, the door was open through all the first half and stretches of the second half for the Cowboys to find some footing in this one. With only a nine point deficit at halftime, despite a scoreless stretch of six minutes late in the first half, the Cowboys had an opportunity out of the gate in the second half to comeback.
Outside of a margin of 4-11 in the early goings, nine points is as close as the Cowboys would ever come to getting back into this one. With a final score of 68-49, scoring was hard to come by on the Cowboys’ side of things in this one, outside of the proficient play of senior point guard Obi Agbim, who finished his night 8/12 from the floor with 21 points.
However, blowing an opponent out offensively has never been the win condition for the Cowboys this season, who play at one of the slowest paces in the nation. Their win condition has lied within their manalytics, their toughness and the edge they garner defensively.
“For us, offense has very little to do with it right now, it’s a lot of defend, rebound, take care of the basketball,” Wicks said before the contest
While it wasn’t necessarily easy for the Cougars to score either, they were particularly efficient from beyond the arc, which contributed to them keeping a stranglehold on a double digit lead for most of the night. The Cougars, who ranked 11th in the nation in three pointers made per game, made nine of 20 three pointers, three of which came from the hand of senior Mawot Mag, who had only one made three heading into the contest.
https://t.co/stgnLBKJGM pic.twitter.com/e6gXglCvZA
— BYU Men's Basketball (@BYUMBB) December 15, 2024
That, right there, is the story of this one. Nothing seemed to go the way of the Cowboys, who did no favors for themselves by the way of 14 turnovers in this one, which has been a constant struggle for the Pokes this season. Ranking in the 300s nationally in turnovers per game, the Cowboys have turned the ball over 10 plus times in all but two of their games this season.
Not all is lost for this Cowboys’ team quite yet, however, as they, outside of the drubbing they took tonight, lost their last three games, two of which were true road games, by margins of three points and one point.
“We’re three possessions away from being 8-1,” Wicks said.
With their final two non-conference games of the season being against teams ranking under 300 in the college basketball NET rankings, the Cowboys should be heading into their second conference game of the season against Nevada at home with a 7-5 record.
If those games are lost, though, then we may start seeing some alarm bells ringing in Laramie.
