Wyoming Cow­boys strug­gle with South­ern Utah Thunderbirds

In a close game, Wyoming 1–0 pre­vailed over a tougher-than-expected South­ern Utah 0–1 squad. The Cow­boys had a con­vinc­ing lead going into the fourth quar­ter, but the Thun­der­birds shut down the Cow­boy offense to end the game. The ‘Pokes had a less deci­sive vic­tory than they had hoped for, but were happy to walk away with a win – no mat­ter how they got it.

Head Coach Dave Chris­tensen com­mented, “It’s always good to get a win under your belt to start the sea­son. We were lucky to come away with a win today.”

Saturday’s crowd wel­comed the Cow­boys onto the field under a set­ting sun. The Cow­boys stepped into a much improved sta­dium this evening in front of over 20,000 fans dressed in gold.

Wyoming seemed to be feel­ing the crowd’s energy and used that momen­tum to get to the end zone in dra­matic fash­ion on their first pos­ses­sion. Austyn Carta-Samuels rolled out of the pocket and tossed a 36 yard jump-ball to Zach Bol­ger which was pulled in for the first score of the night.

South­ern Utah may have been down early, but they weren’t going to roll over. After they missed a field goal attempt on their first pos­ses­sion, they forced a fum­ble and recov­ered it. They cap­i­tal­ized on the early turnover with a jump-ball touch­down of their own to wide receiver Tys­son Poots. The Cow­boys then matric­u­lated the ball down the field on their third pos­ses­sion, but had an inter­cep­tion off of a deflec­tion in the end­zone. The Cow­boys defense forced a three-and-out and then the offense took over right where they had left off. They once again moved the ball well and scored with an eight yard touch­down pass to Mazi Ogbonna to put them­selves up 14–7 to end the first quarter.

The Thun­der­birds got the ball back and ate up some clock on their way to another field goal attempt. This time SUU was suc­cess­ful in their attempt and made the score 14–10. When the Cow­boys got the ball back, they unable to pro­duce any offense and were forced to go three-and-out and punted. The Thun­der­birds didn’t have much time on the clock, but they clawed their way down the field for their third field goal attempt of the half. This time the kick went wide-left and SUU ended up going 1-for-3 on field goal attempts in the first half.

At half­time, the Wyoming Cow­boys were up 14–10 on the South­ern Utah Thun­der­birds. Lead­ing in first half sta­tis­tics for the Cow­boys were: Alvester Alexan­der with four car­ries for 29 yards, Zach Bol­ger with three recep­tions for 60 yards and a touch­down, and the lead­ing tack­ler was Shamiel Gary with nine tack­les. Sta­tis­ti­cal lead­ers for the Thun­der­birds were: Brian Wil­son with four car­ries for 21 yards, Tys­son Poots with three catches for 38 yards and a touch­down, and their lead­ing tack­ler was Matt Hol­ley with seven tackles.

The third quar­ter belonged to the Cow­boys, who scored two more touch­downs. One touch­down came by air to Bol­ger for a score and another came on the ground from close-range by Alexan­der. The Thun­der­birds put up lit­tle resis­tance in the third quar­ter, but didn’t give up hardly any real estate in the fourth quarter.

The fourth quar­ter was a turn­ing point for SUU and they came within strik­ing dis­tance of Wyoming. The Thun­der­birds weren’t going to go qui­etly into the night. They fired back with a touch­down and a field goal of their own to put the score at 28–20. South­ern Utah could have scared the Cow­boys even more if they hadn’t missed two of their four field goal attempts.

Wyoming squeaked out a vic­tory in Laramie by a final score of 28–20.

When asked about the team being ready to win, quar­ter­back Austyn Carta-Samuels stated, “I think we were ready, but we did some things wrong that we will have to fix. We know that we still have some things to work on.”

Even though Carta-Samuels was tough on his own per­for­mance, SUU Head Coach Ed Lamb thought he did quite well. Lamb com­mented that, “The quar­ter­back was really ath­letic, and maybe the turn­ing point in the game was when he out-raced prob­a­bly our most ath­letic guy on defense and got out­side to hit a long pass when we were in an aggres­sive sys­tem of defense. He did a great job.”

Lead­ing in sta­tis­tics for the Cow­boys were: Carta-Samuels who went 26-for-32 for 319 yards and three touch­downs with one inter­cep­tion, Alexan­der with 13 car­ries for 40 yards and a touch­down, Bol­ger with five catches for 134 yards and two touch­downs, and both Gary and Brian Hen­dricks had 14 tack­les a piece.

The sta­tis­ti­cal lead­ers for South­ern Utah were: Brad Sorensen who went 22-for-35 with 193 yards and a touch­down, Austin Mine­fee with nine car­ries for 75 yards, Poots with five recep­tions for 61 yards and a touch­down, and their defen­sive leader was Hol­ley with 10 tackles.

Next week the Cow­boys head down to Austin, TX to play the Texas Long­horns. The Long­horns are once again a top con­tender for the national cham­pi­onship and should put up quite a fight in next week’s matchup. The next home game for the ‘Pokes will be on Sep­tem­ber 18^th against the foot­ball jug­ger­naut, Boise State Broncos.