John Luke Fabian
jfabian1@uwyo.edu
Twitter: @HouseFabian
A night that was meant for celebration, ended in disappointment. The Wyoming Cowboys basketball team found themselves losing to Fort Lewis, 77-69, in overtime when they wanted to be honoring the raising of the 2014-15 Mountain West Championship banner.
“I really have to complement our crowd. I feel as bad as bad can be that we didn’t play a little bit better because we had a lot of students here, when really that’s the backbone of our program here,” head coach Larry Shyatt said.
The game began with Josh Adams hitting the first basket of the season and giving the good guys the lead. The lead was not held for long, as Fort Lewis went on a 12-1 run. Wyoming took a timeout to try and calm themselves down. The Cowboys were 1-8 to start the game and 1-3 from the charity stripe.
UW forced a turnover coming out of the timeout, which led to a dunk from Adams and ended UW’s scoring drought. The Cowboys clawed their way back into the game through some fast break buckets and shots made at the free throw line.
A three-ball from Sophomore Alan Herndon with 2:14 left in the first half, gave Wyoming their first lead since Adams’ made basket to start. The Cowboys had a 29-28 lead over Fort Lewis after playing one half.
Josh Adams led all scorers with 16 points and had three steals as well. Overall, Wyoming was not having a great shooting night being 9-26 from the field and shooting 15 percent from three point range.
“It was just poor offense,” Adams said.
For the first two minutes of the second half, the two squads took turns taking the lead. Fort Lewis started to build up a lead about five minutes into the half and out came Adams, Herndon and junior Jason McManamen. With it being an exhibition game, Shyatt wanted to make sure those three got pulled out no matter how the game was going.
This gave the opportunity for some of the younger and newer guys to shine. The Cowboys fell behind by nine at one point, but was able to battle back. With some clutch free-throw shooting from redshirt sophomore Trey Washington and freshman Jordan Naughton, the Pokes were able to force overtime.
Fort Lewis was too much for the young Cowboys to handle, as Fort Lewis was able to get to the line and hit some jumpers that they needed. Wyoming lost to the Skyhawks.
“I really was not looking for the win or the loss, I wanted to get these guys experience in the game in front of a pretty good crowd. I wanted to be in a position that they have not been in, to have them be a little uncomfortable,” Shyatt said.
The Cowboy head coach expressed that the team just had an off night shooting. The Pokes were 32.7 percent from the field and 21.4 percent from beyond the arc. Even though it was only an exhibition game the players believe that they should be preforming better.
“We are competitors, we are here for a reason. We are not here to be complacent. We are here to get better every day and treat every opponent as if they are one of the top opponents in the country,” junior Morris Marshall said.
The Cowboys will begin the regular season Nov. 13 as they will host Bristol University (Calif.) here in Laramie.
