UW-Boise State Q&A

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Nick Jezierny covers Boise State men’s basketball for the Idaho Statesman newspaper in Boise. He answered five questions on Saturday’s game with Wyoming.

As always, I welcome your thoughs and opinions.

Do you think the 77-72 overtime loss Wednesday to No. 12 UNLV will boost the Broncos’ confidence heading into Saturday’s game with Wyoming? More than anything, do you think the team will be tired coming off that overtime game? I would think that taking the No. 12 team in the country to overtime would be a confidence boost. Fatigue is going to be a factor. With only 10 healthy players, and only seven saw extensive minutes against UNLV, there could be some issue there. But this is a team that is well conditioned. What hurts is Wyoming had an extra day to recover from its past game.

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Inside the stats

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What is the most important statistic in college basketball?

Duh, it’s the final score. As long as you have more points than your opponent when the final buzzer sounds, that’s all that matters, right?

But to get to that point and to better evaluate its players, Wyoming tracks a lot of different stats — in practice and in games.

Things like first to the floor, deflections, floor balance and even a coaches wildcard. There are 15 different “hustle stats” kept by the staff.

There are rewards for this. To find out what they are, and some more in depth analysis about the stats UW keeps, see Friday’s Wyoming Tribune Eagle and Laramie Boomerang.

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Live chat on UW sports set for Thursday

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Join me for our weekly live chat at 3 p.m. Thursday on everything University of Wyoming sports related.
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Video: Luke Martinez, Leonard Washington

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The two Wyoming men’s basketball players — both juniors — talk about Tuesday’s 52-42 loss to No. 13. San Diego State.

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Video: Larry Shyatt

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Wyoming men’s basketball coach Larry Shyatt talks after his team’s 52-42 home loss to San Diego State Tuesday night in Laramie.

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UW-San Diego State postgame thoughts

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“We made decisions with the basketball, and even without the basketball, we haven’t done all year. We have even done that in practice.”

That’s how Wyoming coach Larry Shyatt described his team’s offense in a 52-42 loss to the 13th-ranked Aztecs Tuesday night in Laramie.

Shyatt said it wasn’t so much what SDSU did on defense, other than play with great positioning, than his team “self-destructing” with its decision-making.

UW shot only 30.6 percent. That and its point total were season-lows.

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UW-San Diego State key to the game

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Here it is, my highly anticipated key for the Wyoming men’s basketball team in tonight’s home game against No. 13 San Diego State:

Keeping tabs on Tapley: San Diego State guard Chase Tapley was the Aztecs’ third or fourth option the last two seasons, but now as a junior he’s the top scoring option and leads the Mountain West in scoring at 16.6 points per game. Tapley is arguably the league’s best pure scorer. Tapley may get his points, but Wyoming needs to make him work for them. And, if Tapley gets his points, UW needs to make sure no one else for the Aztecs has big games offensively.

Here are a couple of other things to chew on:

–San Diego State has only nine players on scholarship. It has four walk-ons, but they don’t play much. Could the altitude in Laramie play a factor with such a short bench?

–San Diego State has won the last three games against UW by an average of 32 points. But it’s lost the last two games in Laramie during the month of January. The Cowboys won 85-83 on Jan. 9, 1010 and 83-79 on Jan. 14, 2009.

For more on the game, and my other four keys/things to watch, see today’s Wyoming Tribune Eagle and Laramie Boomerang.

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Video: Sam Awrabi

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Here is a video link on the newest verbal commitment for the Wyoming football team, defensive end Sam Awrabi, a 6-foot-3, 240-pound defensive end from Clovis East High in Clovis, Calif.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/video/recruiting-football/Sam-Awrabi-Highlights-1-1095186;_ylt=AmYjbz8FNkqt4ADdc88rWgFnu5B4

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UW-San Diego State Q&A

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I asked Mark Zeigler, who covers San Diego State men’s basketball for the San Diego Union-Tribune, five questions about Tuesday’s game with Wyoming.

After losing so much talent of last season’s team, how has San Diego State been able to simply reload? It’s a combination of rebuilding and reloading. They lost four starters and 72 percent of their offense, but they’ve replaced that with a mix of returning players and newcomers. Xavier Thames and Garrett Green are both transfers, and Chase Tapley, James Rahon and Tim Shelton are returnees. Tapley and Rahon played big minutes last season, but Shelton was limited to about 10 minutes per game by injuries. Having him healthy is like adding a new player. The key thing, though, is that everyone around last year, including the transfers sitting out, was infused with the culture of winning from a 34-3 season. And that, more than anything, seems to have rubbed off. One other thing, and I wrote about this Saturday, is that this is Fisher’s best “film team,” a really cerebral group that is really engaged and attentive during scout and film sessions. Here’s a link, in case anybody is interested: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/20/sdsus-secret-weapon/

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UW-CSU postgame thoughts

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I’ve been covering Wyoming men’s basketball for about 15 years and have been to games the last 20. It’s been at least seven years since I heard the Arena-Auditorium that loud (at least at times) in UW’s 70-51 win over Colorado State.

Attendance was 7,901. Thought there might be more, but it was a great atmosphere.

Speaking of great, how about Leonard Washington?

32 points, 14 rebounds, two steals and one blocked shot. Many of us media folks thought he might have got short changed on some blocks and steals.

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