Cowboys look to keep the momentum on the road at Colorado State

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

Picked sixth in the preseason polls, the Wyoming Cowboys have finally moved back up to sixth place in the Mountain West Conference standings with four games to play.

Hanging on to the position, or even moving up, is now first and foremost on their minds.

The Cowboys can go a long way in achieving a strong finish with a win over Colorado State Wednesday night at 6 p.m. in Moby Arena.

“I think no game is bigger than the last or the next,” Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer said. “We know we are going to play in a very hostile environment, play a very good team at home. They took Utah to overtime, so we know they are good. It is going to be another struggle, another tough game. If we can defend the way that we have defended and offensively, if we hit the shots that we normally hit, then we’ll be OK.”

The Cowboys, 16-10, 5-7 in the Mountain West, are coming off of two good home wins over UNLV and TCU.

“This week was important because we played two teams who were ahead of us in the standings, and we were able to come away with two wins,” Schroyer said after Saturday’s win over TCU.
Now they have to make sure that a team below them -- rival Colorado State -- doesn’t do the same thing to them this time around.

Schroyer said that his players know to not take any team lightly, something that he still emphasized this week in practice.

“They understand what we are playing for. We always talk about the next game, the next day,” Schroyer said. “We really don’t talk about opponents, but we talk about being the best that we can be. We know that we’re going to have to play really well to beat anybody in this league on the road. CSU and Air Force are obviously no different.”

For Wyoming senior Brandon Ewing, he will be playing the Rams for the final time in Fort Collins and possibly for the final time in his UW career.

He said he will be ready.

“CSU don’t like us and Wyoming don’t like CSU,” Ewing said. “That’s what happens in my mind. It is going to be a rivalry game. I’m sure they don’t want us to win and we don’t want them to win. It will come down to who is tougher.”

Fellow senior Sean Ogirri has played the Rams just once, and the Denver native admits that the fact that CSU didn’t recruit him, he‘ll have a little extra for them.

At the same time, he said that as a team, they just have to play to keep the momentum.

“I’m just playing for this time, trying to get a win, so we can keep moving up in the rankings in conference,” Ogirri said.

Even though the season is winding down, Schroyer said the Cowboys have a lot to play for and that is critical for the maturation of the program.

“There’s a lot of basketball to be played,” Schroyer said. “This league is so good this year, every win is so critical. But it does feel good to have 16 on the left and we have a few more to play.”