Wyoming fans at the Pepsi Center on Saturday night were easy to hear and easier to find. They comprised at least three-fourths of the 10,840 present. Some wore cowboy hats. Nearly all wore a shade of brown and sat in brown seats.
The best of them was a group of Wyoming students who arrived shirtless with school letters painted on their chests.
There was a guy with a W. Then another with a Y. There was the O. And then, only, an exclamation point.
“We were the only ones brave enough to do it,” said Chris Strampe, 19, a sophomore from Green River, Wyo. He was the W.
Next year, he said, they will shoot for the remaining M-I-N-G.
They watched their team avoid a brownout against San Diego State. They watched their Cowboys, who had shambled into the Mountain West Conference Tournament losers in nine of their last 10 games, start fast, play faster, hang handsomely against a team that had defeated them twice during the regular season, including one game by 19 points only a few days ago.
Wyoming pushed the game into overtime.
Once there, San Diego State’s talent and will won out, 69-64, earning the Aztecs their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2002. And with a 24-8 record, their most victories in Division I play.
Just like the missing M-I-N-G, the Cowboys’ spirited run was incomplete in the end.
They could have become the first team in Mountain West Conference Tournament history to earn its NCAA Tournament berth with a losing record. Wyoming will learn what fallout will follow.
For several days now, the assumption has been Steve McClain is toast at Wyoming.
His eighth year, this season, was supposed to be his last as Cowboys coach. His bosses have gone mum on the subject, but word from them leaked a few days ago; McClain initially confirmed it, then backtracked.
His record entering this season was 126-82 at Wyoming and 55-43 in conference play. McClain had lodged only one losing season in his first seven. Then came this brownout, this seedy 14-15 year with a 5-11 conference record. The sorry regular-season finish. Nobody at Wyoming thought he could rescue this team. Nobody saw this tournament run coming. Not even McClain.
All it does is likely make a split a bit more bearable for all.
McClain is a reminder that coaching college basketball is big business and big pressure. He reminds us that the Mountain West Conference is competitive beyond what those on the fringes might think. This San Diego State team will give any opponent fits in the tournament. It is from the Mountain West, where four first-round NBA picks have been found in the past three years, including last season’s No. 1, Andrew Bogut.
What a meaningful victory and season for Steve Fisher, the San Diego State coach.
I was there the night he won the 1989 national championship for Michigan against Seton Hall. His smile after this MWC championship was just as broad and just as joyful as the night he won it all.
Fisher has coached in three NCAA championship games. This is his seventh San Diego State season.
In the eight seasons before he arrived, the school was 77-146 in men’s basketball.
It went 16-35 in his first 51 games there.
But San Diego State stuck with Fisher, and he stuck with San Diego State and kept working, recruiting, teaching. At Michigan, he eventually found himself squarely where McClain sits. But with the Aztecs, Fisher has found a home and a blossoming team.
This current group is young and younger, with the primary components likely back for a stirring run next season. This year Fisher is riding them as far and as long as he can, knowing that if the team remains complete, the best is to come.
But why not make a splendid tournament run right now, this season? Fisher will preach that message, that sometimes you can leap beyond youth and inexperience toward something gallant.
Maybe that has already happened for Wyoming, left for dead but after another look quite alive and hungry.
And San Diego State? The more the Aztecs play with a classy coach and teacher, the more they learn on the run.
No matter their tournament seed or which team they draw, this team will be a tough out.
Just what the Mountain West Conference hoped to deliver.
Staff writer Thomas Georgecan be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
