The new look Cowboys had their home debut on Saturday, beating the reigning NAIA champion College of Idaho 111-63. There are plenty of articles recapping the game (see one from 7220 Sports here), so I'm not going to put out another one. Rather, I'll give you my thoughts on what I saw from the team. Please note that this was an exhibition game against an NAIA team, but there are still some good takeaways from this game.
- Naz Meyer is for real - Welcome to Laradise #2! It was immediately apparent that Naz is going to be a problem for other teams throughout the season. 16 seconds into the game he drained a 3, then followed that up with drawing a foul on the next possession on a fast break and sinking both free throws. The freshman ended up with 18 points, 4 assists, and 2 steals in the contest. Postgame he remarked that he had a decent game, but that he needs to improve his physicality and get after rebounds at a higher rate. It will be fun to watch him grow throughout the season.
- Speed is the name of the game - We heard all summer how this team was going to be fast; how they were going to push the pace and use the altitude to their advantage. We saw Saturday that those comments weren't just lip service. The Pokes came out red hot to start the game. At the end of the first half they were shooting 51.4% and draining 3s at a blistering 46.2%. Of the 58 first half points, 19 came from points off turnovers. The Pokes did settle into a half court offense towards the end of the first half (exhibition games are the perfect chance to work on different scenarios), but came out running in the 2nd half. More often than not this team appears that they're going to be looking for fast break points, which is a welcome change. Coach Wicks said that RP40 (which stands for 40 minutes of relentless pursuit) is their mantra this year. He was especially happy with the 21:8 assist to turnover ratio. I doubt we'll see Wyoming putting up over 100 points more than a handful of times this year, but I do expect to see scores in the 85-95 range pretty often.
- Defense and rebounding will be aggressive - Throughout the game the increased athleticism of this team was very noticeable on the glass and on the defensive end of the floor. There was a lot less standing around and a lot more switching and cutting off lanes than we've seen in a few years. In the paint there were active hands, contributing to 15 steals on the night. Statistically Belic was the best defender in the game, with a 55.6 rating. (Defensive rating is point allowed by a player per 100 possessions). Other notable defenders were Leland Walker, Khaden Bennett, and Jared Harris. As far a rebounding goes, Wyoming cleaned up 13 offensive boards in this one, leading to 16 second chance points. A noticeable part of the uptick in offensive rebounding was guards crashing the glass and cleaning up their misses. No more seeing one guy trying to rebound while 4 others get back on defense.
- We finally have athletic big men - Gavin Gores in particular does not look like a freshman on the court. He's a big body and plays very fast. Abou Magassa got BIG over the summer. He was doing well pushing people around in the paint. Kiani Saxon is a Swiss army knife type of player. He'll bang inside, but he's comfortable with the ball in his hands driving to the basket as well. It's still an undersized team overall, but the amount of athleticism we see on the court makes me think we'll be able to keep opposing bigs from having their way with us in the paint.
- Free throws don't appear to be a problem anymore - Wyoming shot 78.6% from the line in this game. That's a hell of a lot better than we've seen over the past 3 seasons. There were 7 different players that didn't miss a free throw today. Level of competition has nothing to do with how your free throw shooting is doing, so I'm pretty confident in saying that we won't be leaving 15+ points on the floor every night this year.
- Leland Walker
- Khaden Bennett
- Naz Meyer
- Matija Belic
- Abou Magassa
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