Everything has felt like a blur since the very moment Wyoming men’s basketball head coach Sundance Wicks was hired. From the minute he was hired, to last season and till now, everything had to happen quickly.
Wicks and his newly appointed staff had only 27 days to put together an entire roster last season in what Wicks’ befittingly described as “speed dating.” Almost every other coaching staff in the nation–and certainly the ones within the Mountain West–had their pick of the litter with a full recruiting cycle to peruse their options in both the transfer portal and in high school recruiting.
The options were quite limited for Wicks and company, however. During that recruiting time frame of just a little under a month, Wicks did what he could by scrounging up a late portal class including commits from his previous gig, Wisconsin-Green Bay, re-recruiting players from the previous head man, Jeff Linder’s, initial recruiting class and whoever else he could find to fit the bill of his recruiting philosophy in such a limited amount of time.
Then, Wicks had to quickly acclimate the team to Laramie and find a way to get them to gel together in time for the season’s start.
While that misfit team had some nice moments in the Brown and Gold, the season underwhelmingly ended in a whimper during the first round of the Mountain West championship tournament with a final record of 12-20–with five one-possession losses and three losses of just four points against some of the league’s top teams being the only consolation.
Fought hard until the final whistle.
— Wyoming Cowboy Basketball (@wyo_mbb) March 12, 2025
Season comes to a close at the @MountainWest Tournament.
Cowboys 61 | San Jose State 66 pic.twitter.com/o9hlNoRLp1
“I mean, we were baking a cake without all the ingredients last year, right? Quite honestly, we didn’t have enough time to be able to foster the relationships of recruiting for a long calendar year,” Wicks said.
“To me, that’s just an intentional time where guys learn who you are as a coach and you learn who the guys are. I always believe that chemistry and love are the X factor for championship teams.”
Things were much different heading into the second offseason of Wicks’ tenure. After losing all but two scholarship players from last season, Wicks and his staff had the entire offseason this time around to rebuild the roster from the ground up. Culture fit is one thing, but there are three main components Wicks looked for when recruiting each position: size, speed and switchability.
He seemingly got all of that–and then some–with the roster he recruited this season.
“This team has a high level of chemistry,” Wicks said. “They have a high level of love for each other and their staff, and they have a high level of love for the grind, man. They glorify the grind a little bit and they really get after it.
“So, I think they have all the ingredients to make a good cake.”
The addition of four D-I transfers, three transfers below the D-I level and four freshmen round out the roster behind the return of scholarship players Matija Belic and Abou Magassa, as well as walk-on Garrett Spielman. Those three only return around 13 percent of the scoring last year, in which the Cowboys averaged 67.2 points a night.
That number, however, should be much higher this season. The Cowboys will look to play a much more up-tempo style than the excruciatingly slow pace in which they played the year prior.
“I feel like last year we were going for a slow pace and all that, this year is going to be faster and have more flow,” Magassa said.
Depth was a serious issue that plagued Wicks last year, especially when it came to scoring the basketball. Only one player averaged better than nine points an outing last season, with point guard Obi Agbim–who now suits up at Baylor–taking on a brunt of the scoring, averaging 17.6 points a season ago.
Scoring shouldn’t be as hard to come by this upcoming season.
“Coach Wicks is going to have a tough job distributing the minutes because I feel like we all can contribute to the game,” Belic said of the team’s depth heading into the season.
That was fun! 🤠🆙 pic.twitter.com/9M7rczbDHh
— Wyoming Cowboy Basketball (@wyo_mbb) October 25, 2025
The Cowboys have already demonstrated their high-flying offense in impressive fashion in an exhibition against the NAIA nation champions, the College of Idaho. Four players scored in double figures and six more scored six or more points as well in an 111-63 rout. Freshman Nasir Meyer finished with a team-high 18 points and four assists in his debut in the Arena-Auditorium and may prove to be a crucial piece in the rotation as a freshman as the season progresses.
The Cowboys will officially kick the season off on Nov. 3, where they will play host to Wicks’ alma mater, D-II Northern State.
