UW @ U of A

[LanderPoke]

Well we won the 2nd half. Lol

Only losing by 29 at their place when they started out that hot from 3 isn’t that bad. They were hot and we were cold to start. The way it goes sometimes. They will be a final four threat for sure.

Cal State Fullerton gave San Diego St all they could handle tonight. At San Diego St. was a 1 point game with like 4:30 minutes to go.

Uh, I think they took it easy on us in the second half. They toned down the d pressure markedly

 

[seattlecowboy]

Well we won the 2nd half. Lol

Only losing by 29 at their place when they started out that hot from 3 isn’t that bad. They were hot and we were cold to start. The way it goes sometimes. They will be a final four threat for sure.

Cal State Fullerton gave San Diego St all they could handle tonight. At San Diego St. was a 1 point game with like 4:30 minutes to go.

Uh, I think they took it easy on us in the second half. They toned down the d pressure markedly

Yeah I know that. They have toned it down on everyone in the 2nd half or they would be winning games by 50 ppg so far.

Like I said, I wouldn’t worry about this loss. They are the best team in the PAC 12 IMO. Better than UCLA and USC. 350 of the 360 or so D1 teams wouldn’t stay within 20 points of them at their place. So don’t get too down about it.

 

[LanderPoke]

Well we won the 2nd half. Lol

Only losing by 29 at their place when they started out that hot from 3 isn’t that bad. They were hot and we were cold to start. The way it goes sometimes. They will be a final four threat for sure.

Cal State Fullerton gave San Diego St all they could handle tonight. At San Diego St. was a 1 point game with like 4:30 minutes to go.

Uh, I think they took it easy on us in the second half. They toned down the d pressure markedly

Yeah I know that. They have toned it down on everyone in the 2nd half or they would be winning games by 50 ppg so far.

Like I said, I wouldn’t worry about this loss. They are the best team in the PAC 12 IMO. Better than UCLA and USC. 350 of the 360 or so D1 teams wouldn’t stay within 20 points of them at their place. So don’t get too down about it.

:thumb: K. I feel pretty down. In Linder we trust

 

[laxwyo]

I was hoping they’d be competitive tonight. I think Arizona getting up by a lot really fast and not missing shots really took us out of what we wanted to try. It’s a tough spot when that tool bag hits his first 4 3s. Arizonas D was pretty stout too which makes it doubly tough to counter them making everything.

 

[NowherePoke]

Truly embarrassing. Disgusting

They have embarrassed everyone.

In my decades of being a cowboy fan I’ve never seen anything like this. Getting absolutely embarrassed on national tv. Worst showing of my lifetime. Easily. How does a team come back from something like this? Pretend it did happen?

You have probably just suppressed the memories, but this isn’t even close to the worst showing. It was awful, don’t get me wrong, but it reminds me of a few other games:

02-03 @ Kansas. Lost 98-70 at KU. Pokes managed to finish 3rd in the MWC that year with Uche and Donta as seniors and made the NIT despite getting thoroughly outclassed in Lawrence. Pokes won’t finish that high this year of course, but just as a reference.

04-05 @Arizona. Lost 98-70 at Arizona (yep, same score as KU). Stymeman mentioned this one already. That Wyoming team finished .500 in MWC play with Straight and Williams.

08-09 @UCLA. Lost 113-62 and it wasn’t that close. Granted, Schroyer was the head coach but it was Schroyer’s one decent team that won 19 games with Ewing, Johnson, and Ogirri as senior starters.

17-18 Cincy. Lost 78-53 in the Cayman Islands tourney championship game. We were feeling pretty good about a 4-0 start including a couple, of decent wins in the Cayman tourney and Cincy (who was really good that year with Cronin) just kicked our ass. I think it was 20-4 before we even knew what hit us. That was Edwards best team that finished 10-8 in the MWC with Dalton, Herndon, and Adams as Seniors and JJ as a junior (Maldo as a freshman).

SDSD last year in the regular season. We got destroyed in San Diego by 30 and 27 in back to back games last year. We still managed a decent year overall.

We have plenty of others that are worse, but these stood out to me as having generally decent UW teams lose big in high level OOC (other than last years SDSU) games. We really don’t play that many truly top tier teams OOC, so not a lot of examples to choose from.

Shyatt didn’t really have games like this (we got our ass kicked a few times but it was like 60-42) due to style/tempo but there were so games that we really didn’t seem to have much of a chance in.

I think there is a lot of reason to still believe that we are a mid-pack MWC team that is on the right trajectory overall in Linder’s second season after inheriting an absolute dumpster fire.

We need some help at PG and backup 4/5 for next year, that is very clear. However, I am still excited about the future of Cowboy Hoops.

 

[LanderPoke]

Don't know why, but last night just felt different. Worse than that Cincy loss. AZ could have scored infinite points. Cincy, SDSU at least had to work for theirs it seems. I've never seen a team so effortlessly put up points, get steals, get rebounds as AZ did against a supposedly quality opponent.

Whatever, I'm flushing it out of my mind like a good Wyoming fan

 

[Adv8RU12]

The worry is is that this could be the start of what the football team did. Utah Valley is actually pretty good.

 

[Bryoming]

I definitely don't think it's time to panic just yet. This is a 20 win Wyoming team. That's a good team that has a chance to make the NCAA tourney. Arizona is a 30 win squad. I will be floored if they're not in the Final Four. They're on a different level.

This game looked exactly what you expect a 3rd place Mountain West team full of sophomores to look like when playing a national championship contender. This was ugly, but games like this show a team what they are lacking. Wyoming needed this game. It shows them how far they have to go, and how much harder they need to work to get there.

 

[seattlecowboy]

The worry is is that this could be the start of what the football team did. Utah Valley is actually pretty good.

I wouldn’t worry about that. Wyoming should definitely win at home against Utah Valley St.

What happened last night to the basketball team was the equivalent of our 2016 football team who played in the conference championship, having to go play a regular season game at Alabama and getting blown out (everyone knows before hand what most likely happens) losing it 56-10 type deal.

Before the game you are hopeful that we are good enough to stay with them but in reality we are just a really good MWC team but not ready yet to compete with one of the top 3 teams in the country at their place. You just flush it and go onto the next game and work on winning the conference.

 

[Cowduck]

I just haven't seen a team look completely deer-in-headlights quite like that in a long time. And yeah, our ballhandling deficiencies were really exposed in this game. That's probably my greatest worry going forward, is that teams will see this tape and really extend their defense on us and force a lot of turnovers.

A team that wants to level up needs to get its ass handed to it like this at some point in order to see what it looks like at the top. Now it's on the group - coaches and players - to take the right lessons away from this experience. It's gotta be treated as a reality check, not as a complete deflation. I think Linder knows how to handle it.

 

[nwpoke]

I'd like to think Linder, the coaches and the athletes are resilient and mature enough to take the butt whipping as a learning experience, and be stronger for it in the long run. Seems like we had this discussion last year at least twice (SDSU), and we got our shit together soon after.

Bottom line, we've got work to do, without a doubt, but we've also got the guys to compete well in conference, and then...we'll see. Go Pokes!

 

[Vt poke]

I'd like to think Linder, the coaches and the athletes are resilient and mature enough to take the butt whipping as a learning experience, and be stronger for it in the long run. Seems like we had this discussion last year at least twice (SDSU), and we got our Sh#t together soon after.

Bottom line, we've got work to do, without a doubt, but we've also got the guys to compete well in conference, and then...we'll see. Go Pokes!

The reality is that we were outclassed and outside of Ike, we don’t have one guy on our team that would be in the 10 deep rotation there. Arizona is stacked top to bottom and full of very good athletes. The fact that they were sinking their 3’s blew this game out. We will be fine, and it’s prob good for our team to see how fast the next level teams are, we certainly won’t face a team like this the rest of the year other than when we make the NCAA tourney

 

[laxwyo]

I'd like to think Linder, the coaches and the athletes are resilient and mature enough to take the butt whipping as a learning experience, and be stronger for it in the long run. Seems like we had this discussion last year at least twice (SDSU), and we got our Sh#t together soon after.

Bottom line, we've got work to do, without a doubt, but we've also got the guys to compete well in conference, and then...we'll see. Go Pokes!

The reality is that we were outclassed and outside of Ike, we don’t have one guy on our team that would be in the 10 deep rotation there. Arizona is stacked top to bottom and full of very good athletes. The fact that they were sinking their 3’s blew this game out. We will be fine, and it’s prob good for our team to see how fast the next level teams are, we certainly won’t face a team like this the rest of the year other than when we make the NCAA tourney

True depth really shows. Ike can hang but we sub Thompson for Ike and you find out fast the difference between a top 5 team and us. The’d sub Ike for Ike and maldo for maldo.

 

[flyfishwyo]

It was a bummer to get blown out like that, but I saw a few things that I really liked. DuSell and Ike played HARD down the stretch. Both are super competitive. Jeffries was pretty close to the same level, but his defense didn't hold up as well as the other two. It was good to see Foster get some time. My guess is he's probably not back to 100% physically, but he showed he's still a scrapper.

Arizona is clearly a top level national team. They won't lose many games this year. It was good for our guys to see what that looks like and understand what they need to do to be prepared next time.

We know what we have in Maldo and Thompson. Both need to play well for us to win. Linder said something earlier this year about Maldo being really good when he plays at his speed. Arizona made that nearly impossible. Thompson is good as a 4 against most of the teams we'll play this year.

It seemed like Oden got lost on defense quite a few times. He's much improved from last year, so I bet he learns from this one and continues to get better.

Maybe it was just me, but I didn't see Linder try to slow the game down with time outs or slow play when the lead grew. I wonder if he was trying to subtly let them learn on the go by letting mistakes happen. Just a thought.

Ugly score but not a bad loss. I'm still positive on the outlook for the rest of the year.

 

[wwplayer]

It was a bummer to get blown out like that, but I saw a few things that I really liked. DuSell and Ike played HARD down the stretch. Both are super competitive. Jeffries was pretty close to the same level, but his defense didn't hold up as well as the other two. It was good to see Foster get some time. My guess is he's probably not back to 100% physically, but he showed he's still a scrapper.

Arizona is clearly a top level national team. They won't lose many games this year. It was good for our guys to see what that looks like and understand what they need to do to be prepared next time.

We know what we have in Maldo and Thompson. Both need to play well for us to win. Linder said something earlier this year about Maldo being really good when he plays at his speed. Arizona made that nearly impossible. Thompson is good as a 4 against most of the teams we'll play this year.

It seemed like Oden got lost on defense quite a few times. He's much improved from last year, so I bet he learns from this one and continues to get better.

Maybe it was just me, but I didn't see Linder try to slow the game down with time outs or slow play when the lead grew. I wonder if he was trying to subtly let them learn on the go by letting mistakes happen. Just a thought.

Ugly score but not a bad loss. I'm still positive on the outlook for the rest of the year.

If you stop and think about it, for most of us, haven't some of our best/deepest/most profound learning experiences come out of some our worst defeats/train wrecks/disasters? Seems to me maybe this coach, rather than trying for an impossible win, was much more intent on his "students" learning some powerful lessons. I have to say I'm very impressed with this Linder - hope Wyo can keep him around for a while.