{"id":9067,"date":"2017-12-28T08:57:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-28T15:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/?p=9067"},"modified":"2017-12-28T08:57:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T15:57:46","slug":"9067","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/9067\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thoughts: MW Opener Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hayden Dalton seen here against Pacific had a monster game against SDSU. Photo Credit: Pete Arnold.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Wyoming Cowboys got off to a flying start in their 2017\/2018 Mountain West conference season with an 82 to 69 win over San Diego State in Laramie. Here are some random thoughts on the win in the Dome of Doom.<\/p>\n

Dalton’s Big Night<\/h3>\n

Hayden Dalton is the leading candidate for Mountain West Player of the year! Okay maybe not, but if he can play anywhere near this good consistently then we might be looking at a very special year in Laramie.\u00a0 Against the Aztecs, Dalton put up a monster line 36pts\/15reb\/5asst\/2blk while only having 3 turnovers.\u00a0 That’s a performance any player in America would be proud of.\u00a0 But we’ve seen performances like this before from HD, the problem\u00a0is he has been can be wildly\u00a0inconsistent.\u00a0 One night he’s by far the best player on the court and the next he is a complete no-show.\u00a0 I’m hoping we will see\u00a0the version of Dalton that played against the Aztecs more often than\u00a0turnover machine uninterested Dalton.<\/p>\n

James Had An Off Night<\/h3>\n

Justin James had an off night against SDSU as he only had 9pts on 4-13 from the field.\u00a0 Even though his shots weren’t falling I thought he was still able to get anything he wanted in the lane.\u00a0 It was encouraging to see that James can still penetrate and get quality looks\u00a0against a lengthy\/athletic team like SDSU.\u00a0 Even though James had a rough game\u00a0Wyoming was still able to overcome that and get their biggest margin of victory against SDSU since 2001.\u00a0 Even more impressive was the fact that James was on the bench when Wyoming took control of the game.\u00a0 When was the last time Wyoming was able to beat a team like the Aztecs when arguably our best player had a bad game?<\/p>\n

Maldonado And Kelley Make Strides<\/h3>\n

Would you have believed me if before the game I would have told you that we will beat\u00a0the Aztecs by 13pts with\u00a0Cody Kelley and Hunter Maldonado being our 2nd and 3rd best players in the game?\u00a0 You would have thought I was crazy, and rightfully so.\u00a0 I have been hard on Kelley in the past\u00a0and he has been proving me wrong all season.\u00a0 Even again\u00a0tonight\u00a0before the game I said to my brother that “Players like Kelley and Gorski don’t match up well with SDSU.”\u00a0 So once again Kelley is making me eat crow and boy does it taste delicious.\u00a0 Kelley was absolutely superb in the win, he had 14pts and was 4-6 from three.\u00a0 As for Maldonado, it was good to see him back in the starting lineup, as he gives our team a much better defensive edge than Gorski.\u00a0 Maldonado (6pts\/6reb\/4asst) didn’t do anything splashy but just seems to be in the right place at the right time and makes good smart basketball plays.<\/p>\n

All Backup Line-up Needs Rethinking<\/h3>\n

The lineup experiment\u00a0of all backups (Redding\/Gorksi\/Adams\/Moemeka\/Naughton) playing together at the same time needs to end.\u00a0 I have no problem with any of those players seeing minutes in a particular game but they need to be mixed in and playing with starters.\u00a0 There just isn’t enough scoring in that unit and against a defensive team like the Aztecs you’re going to struggle to score.\u00a0 When that unit entered the game we were up by 2pts, when they left we were luckily only down by 1pt.\u00a0 If Edwards continues to play that lineup together I see other teams making us pay significantly more than SDSU did.<\/p>\n

Second Half Explosion<\/h3>\n

The second half against the Aztecs was the best half Wyoming has played all season.\u00a0 We outscored them\u00a0 45-29, we were 6-13 from three, we out rebounded them by 5, and we only had 3 turnovers.\u00a0 Numbers can be deceiving and don’t allows paint a clear picture.\u00a0 But in this particular case, they do.\u00a0 Because it wasn’t all just Hayden Dalton making crazy shots you only see in a game of horse, Wyoming was getting almost anything they wanted offensively both inside and out.\u00a0 The quality of looks we were getting in the second half were exponentially better than the first half.\u00a0 Which gives me hope that this coaching staff can make halftime adjustments and we don’t have to be a team that just lives and dies by the three.<\/p>\n

Front Line Possibilities<\/h3>\n

I would like to see us try playing a front line of Dalton\/Herndon\/Moemeka together.\u00a0 I think that would give us a great combination of skill\/shooting\/athleticism\/rebounding.\u00a0 Herdon several times over the last few years has guarded the opposing teams’ top perimeter player so defensively he can guard the 3, so that shouldn’t be an issue.\u00a0 Plus I think Moemeka needs more playing time anyway and that would be a good way to get him more minutes because when he plays he almost always gives positive minutes.<\/p>\n

Get Out Of The Zone<\/h3>\n

I’m not a big fan of our zone defense.\u00a0 It was better in the second half but I also think we sprinkled in more man to man looks in the second half as well but in the first half\u00a0SDSU was able to get anything they wanted against it.\u00a0 I’m sure the thinking was to make them beat us with three’s since they only shoot 30% as a team on the year.\u00a0 The problem is we were giving them wide open three’s and even bad shooting teams can make those shots at this level and the Aztecs did just that as they made 6 three’s in the first half.\u00a0 An additional problem with playing zone defense is giving up offensive rebounds since defenders don’t always have someone to box out, and were a poor rebounding team, to begin with so it compounds the problem.\u00a0 I’ll give credit where credit is due and Edwards plan got us the win, but if we play zone against teams like Nevada (42% from three),\u00a0Boise State\/UNLV\/Fresno State\u00a0(40% from three),\u00a0I think we will be in for a very\u00a0long night<\/p>\n

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The Wyoming Cowboys got off to a flying start in their 2017\/2018 Mountain West conference season with an 82 to 69 win over San Diego State in Laramie. Here are some random thoughts on the win in the Dome of Doom. Dalton’s Big Night Hayden Dalton is the leading candidate for Mountain West Player of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[873,223,1032,151],"class_list":["post-9067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wyoblog","tag-allen-edwards","tag-basketball","tag-hayden-dalton","tag-wyoming-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}