Cowboys never get going and fall to Utes in semifinals

Wyoming-Utah boxscore

LAS VEGAS -- Everything the Wyoming Cowboys did well to knock off New Mexico the night before, they couldn’t do against Utah, falling to the Utes 68-55 on Friday in a semifinal game of the Mountain West Conference Tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center.

The Utes also had another big game from the league’s top player, Luke Nevill, and earned their third lop-sided win of the year against the Cowboys. In their three wins over Wyoming, the Utes have won by an average of 15.6 points a game.

“My hat is off to Utah. I think they're really, really good,” Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer said. “When you beat the SEC champion by 30 early in the year, it just tells you how good they are. My hat's off to them. They're very, very good.”

The 7-foot-2 Nevill, who struggled some against TCU the night before, made sure that didn’t happen two nights in a row, scoring 10 of the team’s first 13 points and then did that again in the second half after the Cowboys had cut the lead to five. He finished with 23 points and 15 rebounds.

“They got like a 9-foot wall, 9-foot building sitting there in the paint," Wyoming senior guard Brandon Ewing said. "It's tough to get an inside presence going. Basketball, you got to go inside-out. But we couldn't really do that today because they real big and real long down there, especially with Luke Nevill on the defensive end, kind of tough to get things going.”

After hitting 10 of 19 3-pointers against the Lobos, the Cowboys never got going from the outside, hitting just 1-of-10.

“We missed a lot of easy ones that we definitely could have made. Sean missed some ones he's definitely capable of making,” Ewing said. “Same with me. But it just didn't go tonight."

Ewing, who was 0-of-3 from behind the arc, led the Cowboys with 13 points. Ogirri hit 1 of 3 3-pointers and finished with 12 points. The two had nine 3s the night before, combining for 37 points.

Ewing said Nevill’s size sets the tone defensive on the court for the Utes and the Cowboys didn’t respond.

“They were just physical with us like B said,” Ogirri said. “They got Nevill down, it's tough to get shots in the paint. They're just physical. It bothered me a little bit and we didn't make as many 3s as we have.”

Carlon Brown scored 13 points for the second-seeded Utes (23-9), who will face fourth-seeded San Diego State in Saturday's championship game after easily holding off the Cowboys for their 10th victory in 12 games.

After foul trouble limited Nevill's minutes in Utah's quarterfinal win over TCU, the Utes leaned squarely on their 7-foot-2 Australian center against Wyoming. The Mountain West's player of the year got the ball down low on most possessions in the second half, methodically scoring 12 points and passing out of double-teams by the smaller Cowboys (19-13).

Utah beat TCU one day earlier on a last-second 3-pointer by Lawrence Borha, but no such drama was required against Wyoming. Utah jumped out to an early 18-6 lead, although Wyoming stayed in it with most of its points coming from Ogirri and Ewing.

Utah led by as much as 13, as New Mexico did on Thursday, and the Cowboys battled back to make it a six-point halftime game.

Tyson Johnson and A.J. Davis led a 10-2 run by Wyoming in the second half to trim Utah's lead to 48-43, but Nevill then scored five consecutive points for the Utes before drawing the defense to leave Luka Drca open for a 3-pointer with 7:59 to play, and Utah's lead never dipped below nine points.

The Cowboys shot just 34 percent from the field (17-of-50) and had just three assists.

“They're really hard to score against because of their length,” Schroyer said. “They're just very, very big and long. They really do a good job of shortening gaps on the ball. Just really hard to get where you want to go on the floor. You know, I think that we space the floor pretty well. But they got a 7-2 guy down there that is really a defensive presence. Tillie is a 6-11 guy with a defensive presence. You're forced to make jump shots against them.

"When you look at our post guys' numbers, we had eight points from Ty and Adam (Waddell). It's not as much that we didn't get good looks and they weren't really working hard; it's just hard to establish a post presence against them. When you're always playing from the perimeter, it's really tough.”

The Cowboys now wait for a chance to earn their first postseason bid since the 2003 season in which Wyoming lost to North Carolina in the NIT.