Las Vegas – A year ago, Brandon Ewing nearly led Wyoming to the Mountain West Conference Tournament championship. This year, the sophomore is not only leading the league in scoring, he is calling the plays.
Wyoming’s opening play Thursday against Air Force was a Ewing alley-oop to forward Joseph Taylor and looked almost too perfect. Sure enough, it was as telegraphed as a football team going deep on the first play of the game.
“Brandon scripted it,” Wyoming coach Steve McClain said after the Cowboys’ 67-62 win. “I was getting ready to give them a set play to run. I hear him in the huddle going, ‘If they start what way we’re going to run (the alley-oop).’ You know what, if he believes it will work, then I don’t mind putting a little faith in those two (Ewing and backcourt mate Brad Jones) in what they think happens out there on the court.”
Jones, who made the all-MWC third team despite finishing the season third in scoring (17.6), and Ewing, the regular season scoring champ at 19.8 points, only made the second team.
“Me and Brad was kind of frustrated for like 24 hours,” Ewing said. “But all the coaches, all the teammates and all the people around campus told us to keep our head up. If we win the tournament, then the whole team wins.”
Cougars, Rebels advance
BYU and Nevada-Las Vegas, the top two seeds in the tournament, breezed in quarterfinal games.
Top-seeded BYU led all the way in disposing of TCU 77-64, and second-seeded UNLV was too much for Utah in the third game, winning 80-54.
But some players selected to the all-conference first team didn’t play as well.
BYU forward Keena Young, named the conference’s player of the year, scored eight points on 4-for-13 shooting from the floor. Air Force’s Dan Nwaelele had nine points in Air Force’s 67-62 loss to Wyoming. Nwaelele was 3-of-9 (including 0-for-4 on 3-pointers). UNLV’s Wendell White scored 15 points on 7-of-15 shooting. CSU’s Jason Smith finished with 13 points and 13 rebounds in the win over San Diego State, which was led by Brandon Heath’s 20 points.
No rerun
Wyoming advanced to the title game last year as a No. 7 seed, but rumors over McClain’s status proved a distraction.
“If I learned anything from last year, you worry about the things you have control over,” McClain said.
Footnotes
Thursday’s opening session had a marked increase over the attendance of last year’s initial afternoon session in Denver – 9,813 on Thursday to 5,623 in Denver. The evening session, which included the UNLV-Utah clash, looked like it would eclipse the 10,000-plus for the championship night the past two years. … Air Force had a strong showing including the notorious “Section 8” cadet cheering section. All seniors in good academic standing were allowed to leave school for Las Vegas.
