I love this quote by Utah coach Jim Boylen: “You can’t have 19 turnovers and miss 12 free throws and expect to win on the road.”
He’s right, but in Wyoming’s case it can miss 21 free throws and make only 2 of 9 3-pointers and win at home.
The Cowboys won a hard-fought and thrilling 75-69 game over Utah in front of 4,828 fans at the Arena-Auditorium Wednesday night in their first game without leading scorer, sophomore forward Afam Muojeke.
Muojeke had surgery on his left knee Wednesday morning to repair a ruptured patellar tendon, an injury that ended his season last Wednesday at BYU. Coach Heath Schroyer said the surgery went well.
But back to the game.
Sophomore center Adam Waddell gave his best Willis Reed imitation as he left the game in the second half with a twisted ankle, but came limping out of the tunnel a bit later and finished with 13 points and 22 rebounds. The rebounds tied a Mountain West Conference single-game record and was the second-most in A-A history.
UW had 40 rebounds in the game, total.
“I couldn’t even tell you, (the ball) just came to me,” said Waddell on his rebounding effort.
Added junior forward Djibril Thiam to Waddell: “You were hogging them.”
True freshman Desmar Jackson added a team-high 21 points in just 20 minutes, and played most of the second half with four fouls.
“He didn’t play like a freshman tonight, he played like he’s been on the team for a while,” Waddell said.
Everyone played well for the Cowboys, even though they were 23 of 44 from the line. But they made 9 of their last 13 down the stretch.
“It shows we can make the plays and we’re not going to stop just fighting just because we miss free throws,” Waddell said. “We made enough stops on the defensive end to win the game.”
UW ended the game on an 11-2 run in the final 3:06.
As far as the free-throw struggles, where UW has missed 50 free throws over its last four games?
“We’re going to continue to shoot free throws in practice, and that’s all we can do is just practice, practice, practice free throws.”
I think saying “practice” three times will be the key to snapping the Cowboys out of their slump.
If UW plays like this the rest of the season it won’t win all of its games but it will have a chance to win a few. And even though the free-throw shooting had the fans pulling their hair out, I think the effort and execution is something many will appreciate.
See my column in Thursday’s paper for more on that.
Heading into the game UW was 2-11 when scoring less than 80 points.
Make that 3-11 now.
“Losing Afam was tough, but I think we all know we have enough weapons on the team to win games like this,” Waddell said.
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