Close, but not close enough for Cowboys in loss to Lobos

Richard Anderson photo
Wyoming senior Brandon Ewing is bumped by a couple of New Mexico defenders on Saturday.

Cowboys-Lobos stats

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer knows that Cowboy fans don’t want to hear it and he doesn’t like to say it, but the difference between winning and losing for his team at times this season might be a marginal space between his thumb and index-finger.

“Right now, we’re down -- I’m down and the team is down,” Schroyer said after the Cowboys tough 74-73 loss to New Mexico Saturday in the Arena-Auditorium. “We’re going to have to lick our wounds and get ready to play in Vegas.

"We’ve just played two championship teams here and we had a chance to win both. When you take a step back, it has been a long time since this program has had a chance to win against a championship team here. We’re getting closer. No one wants to hear that today and no one wants to hear that tomorrow, but that’s the truth. We have a lot of basketball left, and it starts on Thursday.”

Just how close were the Cowboys on Saturday? If Tyson Johnson’s point-blank shot would have gone with 56 seconds left, or Brandon Ewing’s off-balance layup with seconds remaining goes in, the Cowboys would have been talking about a great momentum-building win instead of another disappointing defeat.

Trailing by one point with 35.4 seconds left, the Cowboys chose to run time off of the clock and go with a three-option set.

The first option was to go to Johnson on the post. The second option was to go to Sean Ogirri off of a screen, and the third option was for Ewing to drive to the basket.“We got to the third option and we got a shot to go up, it just didn’t go down,” Schroyer said.

While the three options were there, Schroyer and the Cowboys had different ideas of what order those options were.

“Sean had the ball and I think they kind of surprised us because they had a big guy on him,” Ewing said. “Everything as moving so fast. I was the second option and I came and got it. I went to the rim and I just saw an easy layup. They rotated and I just went through the lane and it just came up short.”

Ogirri said he thought the New Mexico defender was going to was going to clear out, but he fought through the screen.

“B was the second option and whatever he did I was fine with,” Ogirri said. “We set it up and we ended up missing it.”

New Mexico coach Steve Alford said it was do or die for his defense.

“We just decided to go man, that’s been our mainstay,” Alford said. “We challenged them, told them that they had to get a stop. I talk to them about just getting nasty defensively. We had to get that stop.”

New Mexico’s Chad Toppert, who had been scoreless for the game, hit what proved to be the game-winner with a short jumper with 1 minutes, 21 seconds remaining.

Wyoming had a chance to regain the lead, but Johnson’s short layup attempt under the basket with 56 seconds left hung on the rim before falling off.

“I just missed it; I should have made it,” Johnson said. “I spun, and everyone knows I can spin. I should have made it."

The Cowboys got the ball back after New Mexico turned it over on a Tony Danridge traveling call with 35 seconds left, setting up the final play for Wyoming.

“We had a couple of possessions earlier and we had a lot of breakdowns in the game,” Johnson said. “It came down to one possession and we just couldn’t get the shot to go in.”

Schroyer was asked after the game if they thought about using their remaining time out with about 10 seconds left as the options were breaking down.

He answered with an emphatic “no.”

Ewing agreed and said they had the right game plan.

“It came down to one shot and I didn’t make it,” Ewing said.