LITTLETON, Colo.—When you lose 61 percent of your offense, along with your point guard, best perimeter shooter and rebounder, one would figure there would be a lot of reason for concern.
University of Wyoming men’s basketball coach Heath Schroyer must replace all of the above. He may be concerned, but if so, he hides it well.
“When you look on paper, it looks like we lost a lot. But I really like our team. I have a lot of confidence in it,” Schroyer said Tuesday during Mountain West Conference media day at the Comcast Media Center.
“I love our talent level. I think for the first time since I’ve been here we have the talent and the depth to really compete in this league.”
The Cowboys were picked to finish sixth in the preseason media poll for the second consecutive year.
And that’s where they finished last season, which was Schroyer’s second in Laramie. UW was 19-14 overall, 7-9 in the conference, won a game in the MWC Tournament and lost in the College Basketball Invitational its first post-season appearance since 2003.
Like most of the conference, UW has a lot of new and young talent with 10 freshmen and sophomores, compared to just one senior and one junior.
Of the 10 freshmen and sophomores, three played last season, and three more were in the program after redshirting or sitting out due to NCAA transfer rules.
“I don’t know if I would use the word ‘young,’ but we’re inexperienced with each other,” Schroyer said.
Sophomore J.D. Luster will take over at point guard for the departed Brandon Ewing, and until other scorers are found, sophomore Afam Muojeke will be the go-to guy.
Muojeke set the MWC single-season scoring record for freshmen last season with 454 points and averaged 13.8 points per game.
Baring anyone leaving the team, UW will have one scholarship available for its 2010 recruiting class and two for 2011.
That excites Schroyer to no end, but that doesn’t mean he’s chalking up 2009-10 as a rebuilding season. Instead, he wants to continue to improve like the team has over his first two seasons.
Like going from 12 to 19 wins from his first to second seasons, and improving two spots in the MWC standings in that same time frame.
“I don’t want to be a spring break basketball program,” he said. “I want to be playing every spring break. Like everyone else, we want to compete and try to go to the NCAA Tournament. We want to compete for a championship. Our expectation is to put those goals out there and work as hard as we can to get there.”
One of the top priorities Schroyer has is to improve defensively.
UW was last in the MWC last season in scoring defense (74.2 points per game) and seventh in field goal percentage defense (42.9 percent).
“For me, personally, that was the hardest thing last year,” he said. “In the last four or five games in the league, it kind of clicked, but up to that point, we just didn’t embrace as a team that side of the ball.
“In what we do and how we play, I think we’ll always be able to score enough. It’s the ability on those nights where the ball doesn’t fall as frequently as we want, can we clamp down and win a game that way? I don’t think we had that ability last year. This year, I do.”
The first exhibition game is at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 7 against Regis, and the regular-season opener is at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in Laramie against South Dakota State.
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Information from: Wyoming Tribune Eagle – Cheyenne,
