The month of February certainly has not been kind to the Wyoming Cowboy basketball team.
Some of that is because of their own doing, like the fact that they have given up an average of 79 points in their last four outings, including allowing a rather displeasing 80-plus points in three of their last four. Two of those losses–to Nevada tonight and on the road at Colorado State–have been 20-plus point blowouts in favor of the home teams.
Head coach Sundance Wicks is well aware that his team doesn’t typically have the capacity to score in the 80’s too often. His offense, which averages around 67.9 points an outing, ranks 316th in the nation in points per game–the second lowest output of points a night in the conference, just ahead of Air Force, a team that sits at a lowly 4-24 on the season with only one league victory. Spotting teams 80-plus points a night is not something the Cowboys can afford to do if they want to win down the stretch of this season, especially on the road.
The Cowboys’ offensive woes tonight in Reno against the Nevada Wolfpack–as well as the fact that they gave up 84 points in the rather lopsided loss–can easily be explained simply by two jarring statistics. The Wolfpack finished the contest with more made free throws than shots the Cowboys had made from the field.
“I know when a team is a lot tougher than you when they go 26/31 from the free throw line,” Wicks said postgame, as he was not exactly pleased with his team’s effort against the Wolfpack, a team they had beaten 66-63 in December.
“We were once pretty tough, and we were once pretty gritty but we’ve lost a little bit of that. And, down the end of the season, those things can happen if you can’t muster up the internal fortitude and the competitive resilience to continue to show up the right way,” he added.
Wicks’ thoughts definitely draw forth some interesting questions about this team. What happened to the team that went on the road at Utah State, New Mexico and San Diego State and intensely battled those teams to the wire in one possession games? What happened to the team that was once feared on their homecourt, a place where nobody in the league wanted to play? What happened to the team that held even the highest octane offenses in the league in the 60’s?
That team hasn’t shown up much at all in the latter half of February, a month that the Cowboys will finish a lowly 1-7 in. Sure, the Cowboys definitely deserved some commendation for their play earlier in the month, where they competed and came scarily close to knocking off the teams mentioned just moments ago. But these last four contests have been a night and day difference between the team that played in those games.
“This is just that time of the year where you got to decide, what are you going to be tomorrow? What are you going to be the next day?” Wicks said.
“In times of adversity and crisis, we don’t necessarily rise to the occasion.”
One would hope that the Cowboys rise to the occasion in their final home contest of the season this Saturday, where they will take on a tough San Diego State squad.
