Tuck’s Take: Wicks Gets Response He’s Looking For in 92-82 Win
LARAMIE -- Sundance Wicks wasn't thrilled with his team's urgency in a 24-point opening night victory over his beloved alma mater.
Wyoming's head coach used that word at least a half-dozen times last Monday night during his postgame press conference. He wasn't happy about the lack of consistency on the defensive end of the floor. He said the Cowboys missed way too many easy layups, too, despite outscoring Northern State 62-24 in the paint.
There weren't enough bodies hitting the floor for his liking. There was a lack of "bloody noses."
Maybe that was a bit of nit-picking on the bench boss's part. Call it a glass-half-empty approach.
Surely a rant was on deck Saturday night after Wyoming outlasted visiting Cal State Fullerton 92-82 in a tilt that featured 15 missed free throws and a 9-for-22 performance at the rim, right?
Wrong.
"You're never going to know what you're going to get with me," Wicks said, flashing that trademark smile. "You know, we beat Northern State and College of Idaho. Respect, but it wasn't a Division-I opponent, OK?"
Wicks' focus wasn't on the untrained-eye statistics in this one. In what would turn out to be a total whistle-fest -- 59 combined fouls were called which helped lead to 80 attempts from the charity stripe -- he wanted to see "responses."
Fullerton took a 49-47 lead on a Bryce Cofield lay-in with 15:45 remaining. Ten seconds later, rookie guard Naz Meyer, who said he was sick throughout the day, answered with a nifty touch of the glass himself. Cofield added another jumper on the ensuing possession. Khaden Bennett, a Quinnipiac transfer who capped his outing with 15 points, drilled a triple on the Cowboys' next trip down the floor.
Less than two minutes later, Titans' big man Jefferson De La Cruz Monegro netted a pair of free throws to again give the visitors a lead.
Meyer, who finished with a team-best 18 points, calmly connected on the second of his three triples on the night, the Cowboys once again reclaiming the lead.
Wyoming would never trail again the rest of the night.
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Despite a dreadful night at the stripe, as a team, Damarion Dennis, Leland Walker and Meyer sank nine freebies down the stretch.
"This team has to learn how to win and learn how to close games," Wicks added. "We got in some special situations late, you know, got to run some get-it-in late-full-court plays to get fouled. Put guys on a free-throw line for them to feel a little bit of stress and pressure. These are all good things for me, because I'm not sure you come in here and you win by 20 again, you know, guys feel like a sense of, 'we could do this.' Well, now you've won a game that was a little bit in the balance, right? That's a big test for us early in the season."
With Fullerton making a final push with just over three minutes to go in regulation, Adam Harakow hit a back-breaking three. To add to the drama, the ball bounced high off the rim and eventually splashed. Still, this Titans' squad didn't go down quietly.
The final dagger, trailing by just four with 1:25 remaining, came courtesy of a deep shot from Dennis.
"It was a big test to see if we can battle adversity and show our resilience, and I think we did well," Meyer said postgame. "Dennis got a couple steals late, leading us to a run in the end there. And, you know, we hit some big time free throws in the end -- one of a few. So, I think it was great."
While you, like me, were busy attempting to trust our own eyes and looking at numbers on a screen, Wicks was praising guys like Kiani Saxon.
The transfer forward who played 11 total minutes and finished with a goose egg in the box score?
Yep, him.
Wicks said he was credited with "screen assists" on a trio of crucial threes to go along with four rebounds and a steal. Uriyah Rojas also got an atta boy after filling in for Walker, who was charged with a quick three fouls in the final frame. The junior guard netted eight points and finished this outing with a plus-nine on the defensive end in just 14 minutes on the floor.
Speaking of defense, true freshman Gavin Gores was a plus-16 in this one. The 6-foot-10 Wisconsin product did all that damage in just 15 minutes.
In other words, everyone played a part.
"It's been fun," said Dennis, who scored 16 and was a perfect 6-for-6 from the line. "We knew coming in we were going to play fast, so we're just finding different options. The coaches call it 'flow.'"
This one was billed as a "track meet." At times, though, it felt like a cross country meet with no shoes on broken glass.
Over-zealous officiating will do that.
Fullerton lost the rebounding battle by just two. It netted 16 points off turnovers, just one shy of the Cowboys. Led by Cofield and De La Cruz Monegro, who both finished with 21, the visitors had four more points in the paint, 34-30.
They won races to loose balls. They were diving. They fought.
What the Titans didn't do was connect from deep, capping this one with just three makes on 16 attempts. As a team, they produced just seven assists. All of those came in the first 20 minutes.
Wyoming had plenty to do with that, too.
"There's a lot of good things," Wicks said. "I'm proud of our guys. I said, 'celebrate until midnight, then we'll erase the board and we'll go zero and zero again on Sunday.'"