Cowgirls to open with CU-Colorado Springs

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

The Wyoming Cowgirls will see some different uniforms for the first time this season, hosting CU-Colorado Springs Tuesday night in exhibition basketball at the Arena-Auditorium.

Tip-off is set for 7 p.m.

Wyoming head coach Joe Legerski said that, as always, players are ready to play somebody different. The coaches want to just get work done. Regardless, he said that now is time to play.

“You need to be able to run some sets in practice that not everybody knows where the ball is going,” Legerski said. “That gets very difficult a times. There is always a positive and a negative to each play. Now, we’re ready to see how many positives we can put together in this exhibition game.”

Legerski expects to go nine or 10 deep this season. One of those players, however, who won’t see action for a while is junior guard Aubrey Vandiver, who is still out with a case of mononucleosis.
Vandiver was third on the team in scoring last year at 10.6 points a game and has been sidelined since mid-September. Legerski said that she is still on a day-to-day, wait-and-see status.

“Maybe a couple of weeks, but we are always hoping for the best,” he said. “All of the sudden, that takes a big portion of our experience away. When you couple in the four seniors that we lost and Aubrey, right now the amount of points that we have coming back starts with Megan McGuffey with four points a game.”

Legerski indicated that he will open with the senior McGuffey at small forward, sophomore transfer Randi Richardson at the point guard, freshman Emma Langford at the two guard and seniors Rebecca Vanderjagt and Elisabeth Dissen at the post.

“That’s what we will start with. We really have had very competitive practices, and I am looking forward to seeing Hillary Carlson on the floor for extended minutes. Jade Kennedy is going to be in that situation, along with other freshmen -- Ashley Sickles and Kristen Scheffler,” Legerski said. “I never get hung up on who gets the call to start. It’s all about who gets the chance to play.”

Legerski said that with any game, you want to go out and play the best that you can.

“We need to find out who can step up, like I like to say, when the lights turn on,” he said. “It’s one thing to play well during practice, it is another thing when it is game time.”

CU-Colorado Springs returns two starters and six letterwinners to a team that went 11-19 overall and 5-14 in the RMAC a year ago.

Wyoming will play one final exhibition game against Metro State Friday at 7 p.m., before opening up regular-season play on Nov. 14 against the Denver Pioneers on the road.