(Autumn McPherson Photo)
It was a painfully familiar story for the Wyoming Cowgirl basketball team in their fifth straight loss in Mountain West play. It’s also a contest they’d likely want to soon forget as the UNLV Lady Rebels rolled over the Cowgirls in the Arena-Auditorium by 29 points.
The Lady Rebels ended the first quarter on a 12-0 run, giving them a comfortable 23-9 lead over the Cowgirls by quarter’s end. They extended that run to 21 straight points before the Cowgirls would eventually answer with points of their own.
By that time, though, it was already too late. The Cowgirls had dug themselves in too deep of a hole – even despite the team answering with an 11-0 run themselves.
“I thought at three and half minutes there at the end of the first quarter, where they went on that 12-0 run, that really got us,” head coach Heather Ezell said. “I was trying to get a little rest there, because we were going to have to get some people extended minutes, and that really hurt us there.”
That quick answer by the Cowgirls was headlined by the duo of true freshman Jane Rumpf and senior transfer Henna Sandvik, both of whom found their range from distance to draw the Cowgirls within 10 points after being down by as much as 21 just minutes prior.
That was as close as they’d ever get to mounting yet another incredible comeback, as the Lady Rebels would push the lead back out to 18 by halftime. The Cowgirls’ struggles continued in the second half, as they would be outscored in every single quarter of play to ultimately lose the contest by a final score of 82-53.
Playing from behind is something the Cowgirls are all too used to doing this season. In their last game, the Cowgirls found themselves down by 13 in the first quarter before eventually losing in overtime. Similarly against New Mexico earlier in the season, the Cowgirls gave up a 10-0 run to open the game to fall behind by double-digits early.
“It’s not something we’re planning on doing, just unfortunately that’s how it’s been going,” Ezell said. “We keep emphasizing that we got to get going from the start and it just hasn’t been falling that way for us.”
Despite the Cowgirls’ tough losing stretch of late, they haven’t lost confidence in each other. The Cowgirls’ losses have been deceptively lopsided, as the Cowgirls have been extremely competitive in conference play despite all their losses coming by double-digits.
“I think we got to look at the positive side because it is tough losing over and over again,” senior Malene Pedersen said. “Then, you got to move on and work with what we have, what good things [we’ve done] and just learn from our mistakes.”
Regardless, the losses keep on stacking up for the Cowgirls. They now sit as low as 11th in the conference standings, just ahead of winless San Jose State–which coincidentally happens to be their only win in conference play.
The Cowgirls will soon have to start turning some of these losses into victories, or the rest of the conference season will be a very difficult uphill climb.
