Wyoming Cowboys basketball team is beginning to build an identity
LAS VEGAS — Sitting on a podium in front of a pair of video cameras, Wyoming men's basketball head coach Sundance Wicks detailed the team he's slowly been perfecting over the last three weeks behind closed doors.
Wicks was on that podium as part of Mountain West's basketball media days in Las Vegas ahead of the opening of the upcoming season. After 17 practices, Wicks acknowledged his team's identity is just starting to realize itself.
"It's about that time of the season you start dishing out playing time. It's exciting, it's also nerve-racking at the time for everybody as well," Wicks said. "At the end of the day, it's a long season, you need everybody. I tell the guys all the time, you need everybody. We're finding our identity."
Given Wicks believes his team has "Mountain West size," he stated the Cowboys' identity this season will be similar to that of the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys of the late '80's and early '90's.
"We are a nineties throwback basketball team, the Detroit Pistons bad boys. We are going to be physical, we're going to be smash mouth," Wicks said. "You come to Laramie, you're going to be bruised, battered, bloody from your trips to the high plains, the 7220.
"I mean we got Laimbeers, we got Rodmans, we got John Salleys, we got Rick Mahorns," he added. "Our fours are fives and our fives are sixes. That's what I tell our guys. We've got legitimate size inside for the Mountain West. So we've got to play to that strength, the physicality inside."
The Cowboys have a closed-door scrimmage this weekend and then an official exhibition contest with the College of Idaho on Oct. 25. Two games in less than a week that will give Wicks a better idea of what his players can do in a live setting against players not wearing brown and gold.
"We might only have 10 guys available for our scrimmage, maybe 11, so all 10 guys have to play," Wicks said. "There's 10 or 11 guys that are going to have to be impactful for us and have to be ready on any given night. We're going to have to be a match-up team. How are we going to match up with the team that we're going to be playing? Because we're going to be big, that doesn't mean that we're going to be fast."
Wicks labeled Obi Agbim, A.J. Willis and Jordan Nesbitt as the Cowboys' primary ball-handlers, with Kobe Newton, Dontaie Allen and Nigle Cook in the rotation on the wing. Then there's 6-foot-10 Scottie Ebube, Cole Henry, Abou Magassa and Oleg Kojenets who will rotate in the front court positions.
Of the 10 players mentioned, seven are newcomers. Kojenets, Newton and Cook are the lone holdovers whom Cowboys fans might have some semblance of familiarity with, though all came off the bench for UW last season. The 6-6 Cook led the way with an average of 6.0 points per game in limited minutes.
Given there are so many newcomers being brought into the regular rotation, it took even Wicks some time to discover what he had. That process remains ongoing for the head coach. Henry, though, a 6-9 graduate transfer from Northern Iowa, pointed to experience as one of the team's key strengths this season.
"We're older, we're more experienced. Most of us are going into our last year, I think we'll have seven seniors this year, so the experience is a huge thing," he said. "Most teams that win, go to a Final Four or win a national championship are those that are experienced at this level. A lot of us have that experience so that's a big plus for us."
Newton agreed.
"We've got guys who have been around the block," he said. "When it comes to March, that's how you win the biggest games. It's guys who know what they're doing, that have been in the moment, that are comfortable within the moment and I think that will be a big separator for us."
Though Wicks wouldn't name a starting five, he has conceptualized the group in his head or taken to drawing up on the white board. It would make sense to see Agbim, Willis, Nesbitt and perhaps Magassa and Kojenets on the court first when the team suits up against Concordia-St. Paul on Nov. 4.
But Wicks made it clear that his bench will see plenty of playing time. Ebube, Newton, Allen, Henry and Cook could also be sprinkled into the starting lineup early as Wicks sorts through his best lineup or matchups against the given opponent for the night.
That's where the hiring of general manager Patrick Stacy should come in handy.
Stacy built a scouting company called Jam Basketball Intelligence that uses analytical data and he has been hard at work analyzing the Cowboys in practice. That data has been translated into "Wicks stats." Wicks named Ebube, Allen, Henry and Kojenets as players who are "dominating that metric."
University of Wyoming Sports Reporter
