Lady Plains­men break the Bronco’s

The num­ber one ranked wyopreps.com Laramie Lady Plains­men matched up with the Sheri­dan Lady Broncs tonight in Laramie and were vic­to­ri­ous over the Lady Broncs with a final score of 54–35.  The young Sheri­dan team came out slug­gish scor­ing only nine points in the first half com­pared to Laramie’s 18. The top scorer of the game was Laramie’s own Amber Van­diver with a total of 16 points, the sec­ond high­est scor­ers were Haley King of Sheri­dan with 10 points and Kylee Ander­son of Laramie also with 10. Absent from lead­ing scor­ers in tonight’s game was Kayla Wood­ward of Sheri­dan, who holds the high­est aver­age in the state for scor­ing at 25 points per game this sea­son, she only scored seven points in tonight’s game.

Sheri­dan head coach Derek Bis­sitt stated, “we just need to get Kayla (Wood­ward) more touches per game.”

Laramie head coach Rod Tyson said that his team was able to keep the ball from Wood­ward and did so effec­tively by hold­ing her to seven points for tonight’s game. Coach Tyson went on to say that Sheri­dan, “is a good team, but was not able to set up their offense tonight.” Laramie cap­i­tal­ized on this and was able to take it to the Lady Broncs to which Bis­sitt said “Laramie played hard, deep, and has a lot of talent.”

One sig­nif­i­cant player who pos­sesses much tal­ent is Van­diver of Laramie, who led in scor­ing and rebounds tonight, Bissitt char­ac­terised Van­diver as “the best post player in the state.”

Afam Muo­jeke out for the season

Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming men’s bas­ket­ball coach Heath Schroyer announced Fri­day morn­ing that sopho­more Afam Muo­jeke will miss the remain­der of the sea­son due to a rup­tured patel­lar ten­don in his left knee. Muo­jeke injured the knee in the first half of UW’s game at BYU on Wednes­day night.

Muo­jeke is sched­uled to undergo surgery next Wednes­day to repair the knee.

Muo­jeke, a native of Jamaica, Queens, N.Y., was aver­ag­ing 17.9 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.7 steals a game enter­ing the BYU game. He ranked sec­ond in the Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence in scor­ing and fourth in steals. He had scored 15 or more points in 13 of 15 games
prior to the injury.

Last sea­son, Muo­jeke was selected as the MWC’s Fresh­man of the Year. With 454 points, he broke the conference’s all-time scor­ing record for fresh­men. He was also selected as an Hon­or­able Men­tion All-Freshman by Collegehoops.net.

Muo­jeke has scored in dou­ble fig­ures in 71.4 per­cent of his career games (35 of 49 games). He has scored 20 or more points 11 times.

[via Wyoming Ath­let­ics]

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

Cow­boys lose another tough con­fer­ence bat­tle vs. New Mexico

The New Mex­ico Lobos held off the Wyoming Cow­boys 70–68 in another hotly con­tested bat­tle at the Arena-Auditorium in Laramie Sat­ur­day afternoon.

Wyoming (8−10, 1–3 MWC), failed to even up its con­fer­ence record, while New Mex­ico (16−3, 2–2), evened its record up.

Missed free-throws and turnovers late in the game ulti­mately sealed the Cow­boys fate and turned the momen­tum in New Mexico’s favor as they closed the door on Wyoming by mak­ing shots from the char­ity stripe in the final minute.

Wyoming led 29–28 at the break in a first half that was chippy and phys­i­cal between two con­fer­ence rivals. The teams have become more bit­ter toward one another in recent years, start­ing with an all out brawl in Albu­querque back in 2007 that resulted in for­mer Cow­boy stars Bran­don Ewing and Brad Jones and New Mex­ico player Jamaal Smith get­ting ejected from the game that the Lobos ulti­mately won.  Each player served sus­pen­sions in their next game.  The Pokes won later that sea­son in Laramie.  The next sea­son New Mex­ico scored a double-overtime win in at the AA, their first vic­tory in the Equal­ity State in 14 years.  In between the next game in Laramie were 45 and 29 point blowouts in The Pit for New Mex­ico, and the next trip to the AA, the home fans saw the Lobos cel­e­brate their first MWC cham­pi­onship on the Cowboy’s home floor with a hard fought 71–70 win.  The two squads would face each other the next game in the first-round of the 2009 MWC Tour­na­ment in Las Vegas, Nev., which saw Wyoming pull off a 75–67 upset and dash the Lobos hopes and dreams of play­ing in the NCAA Tournament.

Both teams went back and forth all after­noon long with nei­ther lead­ing by dou­ble dig­its.  With the game tied 58–58, Wyoming would turn the ball over three straight times result­ing in six straight points for the Lobos, and sud­denly, the Pokes trailed 64–58, their biggest deficit of the game.  One Wyoming missed free-throw after another, three of which were missed by point guard Jaydee Lus­ter on the front end of a one-and-one in the last five min­utes, New Mex­ico would even­tu­ally hang on for another close road win in this ever heated rivalry.

“I thought we played well enough to win,” UW head coach Heath Schroyer said.  “I thought we shot our­selves in the foot at times, but give New Mex­ico a lot of credit, they’re very good.”

The Cow­boys slowed New Mex­ico down by hold­ing them to 43 per­cent shoot­ing and edged the Lobos in rebound­ing 40–39, which was the game plan com­ing in, but in the end the Pokes couldn’t over­come 23 turnovers and a free-throw per­cent­age of 58 percent.

“Our game plan was to out rebound them and take away the three point (shot), and that’s what we did,” Cow­boys cen­ter Adam Wad­dell said.  “It’s just the lit­tle plays here and there and the turnovers.”

“Give our guys a lot of credit,” Schroyer said.  “I thought they exe­cuted our game plan.  A cou­ple key turnovers and obvi­ously some missed free-throws and missed front ends of one-and-ones was the difference.”

Afam­Muo­jeke led the way with 16 points, while Djib­ril Thiam and Wad­dell had 11 points apiece with the Cow­boys shoot­ing 42 per­cent as a team.

“For us, I think we’re get­ting a lot bet­ter,”  Muo­jeke said.  “We just got to get the guys through a lit­tle expe­ri­ence, but these close games, we just got to get bet­ter at clos­ing them out.”

“We’re a heck of a lot bet­ter than we were a month ago,” Schroyer said.  “For us to hold them (New Mex­ico) to three three’s and have more offen­sive rebounds than them was huge.  If we played New Mex­ico a month ago, we would have been drilled by 20 (points).”

A.J. Harde­man had a game high for New Mex­ico with 18 and team­mates Dar­ing­ton Hob­son and Phillip McDon­ald each chipped in 15 points.

Wyoming will hit the road to take on the first-place rival BYU Cougars on Wednes­day in Provo, Utah, at 6 p.m.

On a side note, the game was a white­out as the home crowd wore white shirts for autism awareness.

Cow­boys wrestlers dom­i­nate North­ern Colorado

The Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming Cow­boy wrestling team came out strong in
their match up against the Uni­ver­sity of North­ern Col­orado Bears in the
Wyo Sports Com­plex Fri­day night. The Wyoming cow­boys dom­i­nated the UNC
Bears and at one point lead in team scor­ing by 30–0.

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.”

Cow­boys edge out Aztecs

The Wyoming Cow­boys fin­ished strong with a 85–83 win over the San Diego State Aztecs in the Arena Audi­to­rium with 4826 fans in attendance.

Afam Muo­jeke lead the Cow­boys in scor­ing with 30 points and Jay Dee Lus­ter greatly assisted with his three-point shot that lead the team to secure a fur­ther lead over the Aztecs. The atmos­phere in the Arena was intense for the last two min­utes as Wyoming took the lead and kept San Diego State work­ing to beat the Cow­boys’ full court press. Jay Dee Lus­ter in a post game inter­view  stated that “If we have this kind of effort and play this tough, we can beat any­body.” Six foot four Arthur Bouedo scored a three pointer with 54 sec­onds left in the game to bring the cow­boys to a 82–81 close lead, fol­lowed by Lus­ters three pointer to secure a win for the Cow­boys. Much tal­ent is seen in the Sopho­more Boedo and he was quoted as say­ing “I have been wait­ing for a long time to play, and to give every­thing I can give.” The Wyoming Cow­boys will play their next game at TCU on the 12^th and will return to Laramie to
rile New Mex­ico on the 16^th.

Cow­boys “out toughed” by Rams

The Wyoming Cow­boys 7–7 faced off against the Col­orado State Rams 9–5 in the 212^th Bor­der War. Wyoming was look­ing for a strong start to Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence play.

The Cow­boys were decked out all-in-gold and seemed pre­pared for their Bor­der War matchup, but they came out as cold as the single-digit weather out­side. The Pokes fell a few points behind early and never had the lead in the game. Wyoming tried to rally back a few times but got as close as one point before Col­orado State jumped ahead again. None of the Cow­boys could take con­trol of the floor and the Rams widened the gap before half­time. CSU’s Andy Ogide (18 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals) had no prob­lem tak­ing the reigns for his team in the first half and went into the locker room with a 34–27 lead at halftime.

The Pokes scored first in the sec­ond half and ran the full-court press through­out the half. It looked like that extra pres­sure was going to work in favor of the Pokes but they never found a way to take the lead.

“We cut it [the lead] to one in the mid­dle of the sec­ond half…but we can’t trade bas­kets like we did. We’ve played from behind before this sea­son, but in league play its tough,” accord­ing to Wyoming for­ward Adam Wad­dell. … Con­tinue Reading

Cow­boys maul the Grizzlies

On Sat­ur­day after­noon the Wyoming Cow­boys 6–7 (0−0 MWC) went for the team’s 300^th win in the Arena-Auditorium against the Adams State Griz­zlies 3–7 (0−0 RMAC). The Pokes walked away with their biggest vic­tory since 2003 by beat­ing the Griz­zlies 123–71 to get their 300^th win in the AA.

To start the game Adams State dom­i­nated the paint and found them­selves in the lead early. Their hot streak ended as quickly as it had begun when Wyoming finally seemed to wake up. It took the Cow­boys about 8 min­utes of the first half to get their motors run­ning and to take back the lead, never to relin­quish it.

Accord­ing to Djib­ril Thiam, “Coach chal­lenged us, at one point (dur­ing a time­out), to go out and give it every­thing we’ve got and stop wor­ry­ing about the lit­tle things.”

Wyoming went on the attack and never gave Adams State an oppor­tu­nity to get close again. In the 1^st half the Wyoming attack was led by sopho­more guard AJ Davis (19 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block) as well as junior for­ward Djib­ril Thiam (8 points, 5 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 block). Wyoming also got help from sopho­mores Adam Wad­dell (6 points, 4 rebounds, 1 block) and Afam Muo­jeke (9 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals). The half was filled with foul calls and free throws and dragged to a close. In just the 1^st half, Wyoming went 18 for 26 from the line and Adams State went 21 for 24. After tak­ing over the game in the last 8 min­utes of the 1^st half, Wyoming went into the locker room with a 53–36 lead over Adams State. … Con­tinue Reading

Akron Zips take down the Cowboys

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) - Brett McK­night and Anthony
Hitchens both scored 16 points as Akron blew a 12-point first-half
lead, only to rally in the final min­utes to beat Wyoming 85–76 on
Wednes­day night.
… Con­tinue Reading