Larry Shyatt and Craig Bohl are two tremendous coaches.
They are close to, if not the best, coaches the football team and men’s basketball team have ever had. But never in Wyoming athletic history have they had two stronger coaches that are coaching football and basketball at the same time.
Craig Bohl is in his first season as Wyoming’s head football coach. After seeing just three games I can already tell you that the Wyoming football program is poised for great seasons. In just three games Bohl has convinced players to buy in to him as a person, his coaching style, mannerisms, a new offensive look and defensive mentality. This was evident in week one versus Montana. A team that last year, under Dave Christensen, would have spread out Montana and maybe won the game 56-49, won the game this year 17-12 backed by a strong defense. Wyoming won with defense, and not just because a bunch of high profile defensive recruits came in and stole the show. It is a bunch of Christensen’s recruits that pay attention to detail and trust in the new system under Bohl. It is not easy for players to learn and trust in a whole new offense and a new boss. But the Cowboys have done that, which I think is a testament to what Bohl is building here at UW. He is a tough, personable, witty head coach that, once he has a few years under his belt, will have the Cowboys competing for Mountain West titles year in and year out. He might even be capable of that this year.
Prior to his excursion to Laramie, Bohl was coach at North Dakota State. North Dakota Sate was a division II program when he took over and left the NDSU Bison with three National Championships at the FCS level, while going 7-0 in their past seven games versus FBS teams.
Even though he has only coached three games here at Wyoming, the things Bohl is saying (“We are going to bring back Cowboy Tough”), and the things he is doing off the field, (talking to UW fans in Casper, Cheyenne, Denver etc.) and the product he is putting out on the has already put him near the top of the all-time best Wyoming football coaches.
Shifting to basketball, this is Larry Shyatt’s second stint with Wyoming. In his career as a Wyoming head coach he has amassed a 78-50 record in four seasons. He has beaten two top five teams in Utah and San Diego State and a couple of other ranked teams in Colorado and San Diego State. He is competing in a much tougher Mountain West or WAC than Wyoming teams of the past. The Mountain West is consistently a multi-bid NCAA Tournament conference and in 2012-2013 the Mountain West was rated by the RPI as the toughest conference.
Larry Shyatt, in his first year as coach, led a team that won just 10 games the previous year and turned them into a 21 game winner. He turned them into a team that upset #11 UNLV. He has instilled a family oriented, defensive minded team here in Laramie. He has created acronyms like ADU, “Aggressive, Discipline and Unselfish”, and FYF, “For Your Family”, and his teams are a representation of those acronyms on and off the court.
Now in his fourth season on his second stint, he finally has “his team.” A team that he recruited from the incoming freshman to the senior leader on the team. They are all his recruits.
Larry Shyatt has two National Championships under his belt as an assistant coach under Billy Donovan at the University of Florida, so he knows what it takes to win Championships at the highest level in college basketball. Now I am not going to sit here and tell you that he will lead Wyoming to National Championships, he may, but he will lead them to Mountain West Championship and will keep Wyoming near the top of the conference consistently.
Wyoming athletics are in good hands. Perhaps the best the university has ever seen. The two prized ships of football and men’s basketball here at UW could not have better captains.
