• Dickerson leads all scorers with 16 off the bench

LARAMIE, Wyo. (Dec. 30, 2023) – The Wyoming Cowgirl basketball team opened Mountain West play with an impressive 61-47 win Saturday over Boise State in Laramie. The Cowgirls led for nearly 34 minutes of the contest and held the Broncos to just 32-percent shooting for the game. Boise State allowed just 55 points a game coming into Saturday.

Both teams started the game with a couple of layups as things were tied early at 4-4. The two teams traded buckets later in the frame as Boise State led 11-8 at the first quarter media. Out of the timeout, the Cowgirls got the next 11 points to regain the lead, 19-11. McKinley Dickerson buried a pair of 3-pointers during the run and the Broncos called a timeout with 1:53 left in the quarter. Boise was able to respond after the timeout and Wyoming led 19-16 after one.

In the second quarter, the Cowgirls opened the scoring with a Tess Barnes layup before the two teams started locking down defensively. UW led 25-20 at the media timeout. Following the timeout, the Broncos cut the deficit to one before back-to-back-to-back Cowgirl hoops got the lead back up to 32-24. The two traded hoops to end the half and Wyoming led 34-26 at the half.

UW (6-6, 1-0 MW) started the second half by missing a bunch of good looks inside, before an Emily Mellema driving layup lifted the field goal lid in the third quarter for the Cowgirls. A Mellema 3-pointer before the media timeout out made it 40-32 Cowgirls with 4:07 left in the quarter. After the media, Dickerson helped guide the Wyoming offense to an 11-point advantage. From there, Boise would cut into the Cowgirl lead a bit, 47-38 after three.

The fourth started with a pair of Allyson Fertig hoops and it was a 13-point UW lead. From there, the Broncos would get the deficit down to just eight before a Barnes 3-pointer with a little over five minutes left pushed the lead back to double digits. Wyoming led 56-45 and had the ball with 4:09 remaining as it called a timeout. Out of the timeout, Barnes drilled another three and it was a 14-point Cowgirl lead. The UW defense forced a shot-clock violation with over two minutes to go and then played great defense on the next possession to help salt the game away. A Marta Savic layup with 50 seconds left sealed the deal.

Dickerson ended up leading all scorers with 16 points off the bench. Dickerson shot 6-of-12 from the floor and went 2-for-5 from beyond-the-arc while also grabbing five rebounds and recording a pair of assists. Barnes and Malene Pedersen also finished the win in double figures with 13 and 11, respectively. Barnes also made a pair of threes and had two assists while Pedersen went 5-of-7 from the field.

Savic had five points and a team-high eight rebounds off the bench. The senior also had a pair of assists and steals, as well as a block on the day. Fertig finished with seven points and five boards while Emily Mellema also had seven points and two rejections. Kati Ollilainen led the Cowgirls with three assists.

The Cowgirls shot 45.1-percent (23-51) for the game and hit 6-of-16 from 3-point range. The Broncos made just 22-of-68 shots and went just 1-for-17 from deep. Both teams had 39 rebounds on the day with Boise State pulling down 14 offensive boards. However, the Cowgirls still had a 9-5 edge in second-chance points in the contest.

Wyoming held a 34-30 advantage in points in the paint and also got 21 points from the bench. Boise State scored 11 points off 12 Cowgirl turnovers while UW had 10 points off 10 Bronco miscues. The Cowgirls also made seven more free throws in the win, despite going just 9-of-16 at the line.

“We wanted to guard them without fouling today, and for the most part, I thought we did that,” said Head Coach Heather Ezell after the game.

“Only four free throws for them, is what we want to continue to do on the defensive end. We wanted to keep them off the 3-point line, they went 1-for-17, I thought we really did that. That was a huge focus coming back from the break. Offensively, I wanted us to continue running our motion and make sure that we were running really good motion, and I thought we did that tonight.”

It is now time for a road trip to begin 2024 for the Cowgirls. UW travels to face Utah State January 3, and Air Force on January 6.