Richard Anderson photo
Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer talks to Tyson Johnson, while Afam Muojeke catches some air Wednesday against BYU.
By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org
Tyson Johnson had a game to forget Wednesday night against BYU. In the second half, so did the rest of the Cowboys.
Johnson and his teammates were looking for a strong finish against BYU and New Mexico. They’ll have to wait until Saturday for that finish against the Lobos.
Averaging 13.9 on the season, Johnson scored eight points on Wednesday in the 78-68 loss to BYU, hitting just 3-of-12 from the field.
As a team, the Cowboys missed 11 straight field goals down the stretch as BYU rallied from a five-point halftime deficit.
Johnson, who has been a force on the block this season for the Cowboys, got his chances but struggled to get the ball to go down.
Johnson had no excuses after the game and said it was all on his shoulders.
“I need to player better. I didn’t step up tonight, I let my team down,” Johnson said. “It was all me, it wasn’t what they were doing. It was just me not making shots.”
While Wyoming was stone cold at one point, Johnson was 0-for-3 in the final seven minutes and 1-for-8 in the second half.
“I just had to step up. It was a big game, but it was my fault,” Johnson said.
Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer said that Johnson just had a tough night.
“They are big and they are long,” Schroyer said. “They put (Chris) Miles (6-foot-11) on him, which is different than they had in the past. But I thought we had good opportunities and Tyson will bounce back. We’ve rode Ty for a year and a half and we’ll saddle him up again on Saturday.”
Wyoming senior guard Brandon Ewing had 16 points and seven assists in the game, but he too struggled shooting the ball, hitting 6 of 14 attempts.
Although Johnson was having an off night, Ewing said it didn’t occur to him to try to go to someone else for some scoring punch.
“I don’t care if he goes 3-of-20,” Ewing said. “He’s a senior and he has been trough these wars. He’s had great games all year. I’m not going to go away from him just because he had a tough night. That would crazy on my part."
Senior Sean Ogirri led all scorers with 25 points, hitting six 3-pointers. But he too had somewhat of a Jekyll and Hyde shooting night. After hitting 5 of 10 3-pointers in the first half, Ogirri was just 1-of-5 in the second half.
“I think they just stayed close to me,” Ogirri said. “I went inside to run our offense. I tried to score more, but I didn’t get the job done.”
Schroyer said that BYU did a nice job in the second half of defending Ogirri, but the Cowboys did a poor job of not getting him more chances in the second half.
“We had some other opportunities to get him some great looks. We let those slip by,” Schroyer said. “It’s hard for someone to go for 17 in both halves. If Sean Ogirri scores 25, we’ll take that every day.”
The Cowboys shot just 33 percent in the second half and once again struggled for any consistency on offense. Wyoming got away with it in wins over Colorado State and Air Force, but couldn’t stay within striking distance against a good BYU team.
“I knew we were losing momentum, and it was kind of tough to get it back because they were slowing the tempo of the game,” Ewing said. “They did a great job with that.”
Schroyer said they just have to finish.
“We’ll go back and watch the film and try to find out why we have had a tough time on some of those things,” he said.
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