Another men’s basketball Mountain West tournament is fast approaching and the Cowboys will once again be weighing in as heavy underdogs after finishing in ninth place in the league.
The Cowboys season has been extremely turbulent and they have been on a torrential losing slide down the stretch of the season, as the Cowboys have unfortunately dropped nine of their last 10 games leading into the tournament–though four of those losses have come by four or fewer points.
While the Cowboys have undoubtedly been competitive and have remained close in several high-level games in league play this season, they have unfortunately made a habit of making losing plays down the stretch, rather than winning plays. That includes in the Cowboys’ last time out playing the Spartans, where they saw an early 13-point lead dissipate as the Spartans made all the right plays late, and the Cowboys all the wrong.
“We turn the ball over in moments that we needed to make a great play and we just had a lot of mind farts. We didn’t execute as well as we could have, and we need to be better,” senior point guard Obi Agbim said after the Cowboys dropped that meeting to the Spartans 82-73.
Regardless of losing nine of their last 10, the head coach Sundance Wicks says the win condition for his team remains the same as it has been all year long–and that’s to slow the game down to a crawl and keep themselves in the game with hard-nosed defense.
“We are the same team, we are 65 [points], man. We’re 65 to 70 and that’s where we have to play and stay and we have to get those stops to keep it at 65,” Wicks said.
That’s been easier said than done down the stretch of the season, however, as the Cowboys have not been playing to their tune of late and have given up 80-plus points in three out of their last five losses. When the Cowboys play in their comfort zone–that being within the 65-point range and holding teams under that point range–they are 7-3. When their opponents score over 65 points, the Cowboys are a lowly 5-16.
While momentum may not be on the side of the Cowboys after a disappointing loss on the road at Fresno State in their final regular season outing, gifting the Bulldogs just their second league win of the season, that humbling loss may have been to their benefit. Only time will tell, however.
“I’m not sure there’s a right way to slice this pie,” Wicks said of his team’s 62-58 loss to the Bulldogs. “[whether] to call it a humbling loss and the team plays more convicted or if it was a monstrous loss win and you go play less motivated.”
“I don’t care if we lost to Fresno or beat Fresno, we were still going to have to prepare for another team,” Wicks added
Ironically, the Spartans finished their regular season with a home game against the Bulldogs, where they easily handled them by a final score of 92-68. One would hope that wouldn’t be indicative of how the first-round matchup between the Cowboys and Spartans will be.
A reaffirming note in that case for the Cowboys, however, may be what happened just a year ago, when they also finished their season against the Bulldogs and beat them by nearly 40 points. That Cowboy team then followed that up with a loss to that same Bulldog team just four days later in the opening round of the Mountain West tournament, proving that anything can happen.
The Cowboys will hope the chips will fall in their favor this time around against the Spartans after being swept in the regular season, and a date with the top team in the Mountain West, New Mexico, looms large in the quarterfinals if the Cowboys should make it there.
“The thing that we just tell our guys is just one more day, right? One more day. And if you can stay one more day in Vegas, you can practice one more day as a team and just be together one more day,” Wicks said.
“All you got to do is find a soulful connection where you just want to stay and want to play one more day, and if you can find that, man, that’s what makes conference tournament time special.”
