Cow­girls light up Aztecs (commentary)

The Wyoming Cow­girls won another big Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence game against the San Diego State Aztecs Wednes­day night at the Arena-Auditorium 63–51.
… Con­tinue Reading

Cow­girls break records against Falcons

Sat­ur­day after­noon the Wyoming Cow­girls (13−6, 4–3 MWC) took on the Air Force Fal­cons (3−17, 0–7 MWC) in front of over 3,500 fans. Every Wyoming fan got their money’s worth and more at the record-setting game that ended with the Cow­girls vic­to­ri­ous, 98–37.
The game started off with a three-pointer for Air Force, which was to be its only lead of the game. After the Cow­girls got a three of their own, the flood gates opened with 16 straight points. How? There were rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing forces at work.

Hillary Carl­son put on a show down low, going 10-for-10 from the floor in the first half and her team­mates caught fire from beyond the arc, going 10-for-13 in the half. Jade Kennedy went 4-for-4 and Randi Richard­son went 3-for-4 in the first half, as the other half of the Cowgirl’s attack.  … Con­tinue Reading

Cow­girls skin Cougars

The Wyoming Cow­girls (12−5, 3–2 Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence), came out of the gates slowly on Tues­day night against the BYU Cougars (12−4, 3–1 MWC). How­ever, the Cow­girls ended the game in com­plete con­trol and took down the conference-leading Cougars 69–54 at the Arena-Auditorium.

The first half was dom­i­nated by BYU, as they took an early lead against the Cow­girls. Wyoming was dom­i­nated in the paint through­out the half, but they didn’t let that bring them down. The Cow­girls fought hard to stay in the game, even though BYU was full-court press­ing and play­ing really phys­i­cal defense.

“I don’t think it was any more phys­i­cal than what we’ve played in con­fer­ence play. I think con­fer­ence play is a pos­ses­sion by pos­ses­sion game,” said UW head coach Joe Leg­erski when asked about the phys­i­cal­ity of the game. … Con­tinue Reading

Cow­girls shock #22 TCU

The Wyoming Cow­girls won an old fash­ion wild-west show­down defeat­ing the num­ber 22 ranked TCU Horned Frogs 73–67 Wednes­day night at the Arena-Auditorium in Laramie. Wyoming, 11–4 and 2–1 Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence, snaps TCU’s seven-game win­ning streak leav­ing the Horned Frogs 12–4 over­all and 2–1 in the MWC.

The first half was a game of runs as the Cow­girls came out of the gate fir­ing on all cylin­ders to open the con­test up with a 14–2 streak. How­ever, TCU woke up and stormed back with a 13–2 run of its own and cut Wyoming’s mar­gin to 16–15.

Now it was the home team’s turn to make a run, and run they did, scor­ing 19 of the next 23 points, while using a smoth­er­ing defense to frus­trate TCU upping their lead to 35–19.  TCU head coach Jeff Mit­tie was frus­trated as well, receiv­ing a tech­ni­cal foul at the six-minute mark of the first half.  The Cow­girls went into the break with a 39–25 lead over the num­ber 22 nation­ally ranked team.

The Cow­girls shot 45 per­cent in the open­ing stanza as Aubrey Van­diver led the way with 13 points, while Emma Lang­ford and Hillary Carl­son each recorded 12 points respec­tively.  The Horned Frogs were held to 24 per­cent shooting.

TCU would not go away qui­etly and opened up the sec­ond half on a 15–4 run, and sud­denly, the Horned Frogs only trailed 43–40, but back-to-back layups by Carl­son gave Wyoming some breath­ing room at 47–40 and the fight was on.

The Horned Frogs bat­tled back to tie the game at 51, but then Kris­ten Schef­fler came to the res­cue for her first points of the game hit­ting back-to-back threes and fol­lowed by a layup from Van­diver, Schef­fler deliv­ered again from beyond the arc giv­ing the home team an 11 point lead at 62–51.

“Kris­ten Schef­fler answered the call,” UW head coach Joe Leg­erski said.  “Her three three’s when the score was tied at 51, that’s the dif­fer­ence in the game.  What Kris­ten did in that two-minute span was just an unbe­liev­able performance.”

“I just shot when I was open and luck­ily they went in,” Scheffler said.  “I had a lack of con­fi­dence in the first half and at half­time coach said that when I’m open I have to shoot it.  In the sec­ond half I knew when I got my chance again that I would shoot it.”  “We gave up some shots late par­tic­u­larly to Schef­fler,” Mit­tie said.  “She hit the shot I would call the play of the game, when she hit the tough three there at the end.”

Once again the resilient Horned Frogs would come back with back-to-back treys to cut the lead to five, but that would be as close as they would get and the Cow­girls hung for their first sig­na­ture win of the sea­son and first win over a ranked oppo­nent since beat­ing the Wis­con­sin Bad­gers 67–66 in Madi­son back in 2007.

“I thought Wyoming played a very good game,” Mittie said.  “We just didn’t respond to the tough atmos­phere.  Give them credit; they hit some tough shots tonight, which ulti­mately won them the game.”

Carl­son had a career high with 29 points and col­lected 11 rebounds, while Van­diver nearly had a double-double with 18 points and eight rebounds.  Lang­ford and Schef­fler fin­ished with 13 and 11 points apiece.  Wyoming shot 41 per­cent from the field and won the bat­tle of the boards 45–40.

TCU was led by Emily Carters’ 20 points and Helen Sver­ris­dot­tir notched a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds.  The Horned Frogs shot a dis­mal 33 per­cent for the game.

Wyoming will hit the road to take on the New Mex­ico Lobos Sat­ur­day at 2 p.m., in Albuquerque.

“It gives us a lot of con­fi­dence head­ing into New Mexico,” Vandiver said about the win.  “Coach always talks about win­ning at home and try­ing to get as many wins as you can on the road.  I think if we lost this game, then we’d be kind of down head­ing into the New Mex­ico, but I think head­ing into New Mex­ico that we know we can play with one of the best teams in the con­fer­ence.  It will be a tough game, but I think we’ll be ready for it.”

Cow­girls win opener vs. Adams State

The Cow­girls beat the Adams state Griz­zlies 72–36 in the sea­son open­ing exhi­bi­tion game on Mon­day night in the Arena Audi­to­rium. The Cow­girls are now 10–0 against the Grizzlies.

Com­ing off a 16–14 record last sea­son, the Wyoming Cow­girls faced off against Adams State, a team with a 14–14 record last year.The Cow­girls had momen­tum on their side with the long awaited return of redshirt-Junior starter Aubrey Van­diver. The Cow­girls came onto the court with guns-a-blazing.  They took an early 8–0 lead over the Griz­zlies in the open­ing min­utes of the game with two 3-pointers by Van­diver and strong post play by Hilary Carl­son The Cow­girls early lead led them to start hoist­ing up the three-point attempts.  When asked about the large amount of 3-point shots taken (11−29) Van­diver responded, “When they’re falling, we’re going to rely on them. We have a great shoot­ing team.” … Con­tinue Reading