Wyoming basketball head coach Sundance Wicks said that he may have overstated the importance of the Border War and put too much pressure on his squad in the first meeting on the hardwood between the Wyoming Cowboys and the Colorado State Rams. This team–which is a mishmash group of mostly first or second year transfers–doesn’t necessarily have as much of an emotional tie to this rivalry as the fans do.
“I’m not trying to overly fire our guys up, we understand the importance of every game that we have to play coming down the stretch here,” Wicks said a day before the matchup.
This time around, Wicks just wanted his guys to treat this one as just another conference road game–one that the Cowboys looked primed to be competitive in after they had recently just taken the league-leading New Mexico Lobos to the wire in a tightly contested 71-67 road loss.
Still, the Cowboys had a lot of work to do if they wanted to keep close and competitive in this one, as the Rams easily dispatched of the Cowboys in the first meeting by a final score of 79-63.
“I didn’t like our intensity in the first game. I thought it was one of those lackluster performances from an energy, effort and enthusiasm standpoint,” Wicks said before the contest as well..
Unfortunately for Wicks, the second Border War of the season was anything but competitive for the Pokes, as they fell at the hands of the Rams by a final score of 88-53–in a game where his team looked lifeless for a majority of the 40 minutes.
It would be hard to overstate just how ugly this one was for the Pokes, as the Rams jumped out early and never looked back. The Rams would immediately take a 18-3 lead over the Cowboys following back-to-back 9-0 runs, with the only answer being an Obi Agbim triple on the side of the Cowboys. Things then went from bad to worse for the Pokes, as the onslaught continued for the remainder of the half as the Rams’ Nique Clifford punctuated a dominant half by the Rams with a last second triple to make it 44-19 heading into the locker room.
While the Cowboys came out aggressive in the second half–starting on a 10-2 to open the half–the Rams used a barrage of three-pointers to ultimately bury the Cowboys’ hopes of a comeback, as they’d roll to the season sweep over the Pokes.
The Rams would finish the contest a blistering 14/24 from deep, while the Cowboys struggled from deep, shooting just 6/17 from beyond the arc, despite shooting over 50% from deep in their last outing. The Rams also assisted on 26 of their made field goals, while the Cowboys only assisted on just six of their 20 makes from the field.
Agbim and Dontaie Allen were the only Cowboys to finish in double-figures, as each scored 15 apiece.
The Cowboys will hope to end their longest losing streak of the season against Air Force at home in their next outing, as the Cowboys now sit at five straight losses after their tough loss to the Rams. Air Force is currently winless in the Mountain West, and sits at a lowly 3-22 on the season.
