The Wyoming Cowboys suffered their first loss of the season last Friday at SMU, but bounced back with a home win Sunday over Regis.

Wyoming (8-1) fell to the SMU Mustangs in Dallas, 66-53. An 18-1 run by SMU helped them erase a six-point Cowboys lead midway through the second half. The Pokes went nearly eight minutes without a field goal during the same stretch.

The Cowboys also shot a season low 40 percent from the field. The Mustangs shot 56 percent. SMU also out-rebounded Wyoming 35-16.

Derek Cooke Jr. and Riley Grabau had 15 points apiece to lead UW in defeat.

On the radio post-game show from Learfield Sports, head coach Larry Shyatt said, “For 31 minutes, I thought we played about at peak performance… a good ball club on their home court, you can’t play for 31 minutes; you’ve gotta play for 40.”

Sunday was a different story. Wyoming doubled up the Regis Rangers, 70-35.

The Cowboys used a 22-5 run to close out the first half and were never threatened after that. The UW bench was able to get plenty of valuable minutes.

Matt Sellers led the Pokes with 12 points, as 11 different Cowboys scored. Wyoming dominated in the paint with a 36-6 advantage and shot 54 percent from the field. They also received a season-high 41 points from their bench.

Shyatt said, “I’m very pleased that our guys could focus on the one thing I wanted them to focus on, which was hold ‘em, hold ‘em, hold ‘em… We were also able to get a lot of time for our reserves today.”

An added bonus was senior forward Larry Nance Jr. surpassing the 1000 point plateau for his career with six points. He became the 33rd player in school history to reach that mark.

The Cowboys return to action Wednesday with another road game at California. The game will start at 9 p.m., Mountain Time.

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