Cowgirls improve, but still fall to TCU

Richard Anderson photo

Wyoming freshman Ashley Sickles looks to make a move against TCU on Wednesday.

Wyoming-TCU stats

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

Better game or best game yet? In the long run, it doesn’t really matter for the Wyoming Cowgirls, as they dropped their fourth Mountain West Conference game in four tries, falling to TCU 81-78 Wednesday night in the Arena-Auditorium.

The Cowgirls showed marked improvement from their loss Saturday to an average UNLV team, taking a good TCU squad down to the wire. The Lady Frogs, 4-1 and 12-6, made the plays down the stretch to eek out the road victory.

“The game of basketball gets interesting to me at times,” Wyoming coach Joe Legerski said. “You can be happy when you win; you can be upset when you win. Tonight was a game where I thought we played extremely well. I’m disappointed in the loss, but very pleased with the effort.”

The difference between Saturday and Wednesday? Shooting the basketball. On Saturday, the Cowgirls missed their first 11 shots. On Wednesday, they shot over 50 percent for much of the first half and led by six at halftime.

Those shots didn’t fall as frequently in the final 20 minutes for the Cowgirls, but Wyoming still had a chance in the end.

“What a remarkable game a Wyoming team to play that has struggling trying to find the basket,” Legerski said. “To be able to come out here tonight -- we shoot 48 percent in the first half -- and this team knew exactly that they would face a big zone from TCU, a very talented team in TCU that has two wins over Top 5 programs in the country. To see where we started out tonight, it makes you believe that we are making progress and we have to continue to keep striving in that direction.”

There is still some frustration for a program that won 24 games last season and went to its first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament, to be 0-4 and 8-9 this season.

The losses have been a little tough on the Cowgirls, said Wyoming sophomore center Hillary Carlson, who scored a career-high 27 points and grabbed 10 rebounds.

“It does get pretty frustrating, especially with this making it our fourth loss,” Carlson said. “We just have to get the next one.”

The Cowgirls led by six in the first half, only to see TCU come out of the locker room with a little more fire on a 17-2 run for a nine-point edge. The Cowgirls did come back, though and led 76-75 on six straight points by Carlson.

But Helen Sverrisdottir hit six straight free throws in the final minute and a half to enable the Lady Frogs to hold on to the win. The Cowgirls did have a chance at the end for a tie, but McGuffey’s desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer was well-defended and didn’t draw iron.

“Credit TCU, they really came out and were running. It took us a little later than we wanted to get back in the game,” McGuffey said.

Wyoming freshman Kristen Scheffler finished with 15 points and McGuffey added 11, while TK Lafleur scored 15 points and Micah Garoutte added 14 for TCU.McGuffey said that while they are close, they need to figure out how to put the little pieces together to get and stay on top.

“Unfortunately, the ball is not falling our way,” McGuffey said. “If we just keep plugging away at it, good things are going to happen for us.”

While Legerski said the program is moving in the right direction, the Cowgirls need a win now to reinforce some of the things that are happening to them.

“I’m disappointed that we dropped another game, especially at home,” he said. “But I am also really pleased with the effort that we showed tonight. If we can continue to play with that intensity, we’re going to win some games.”

The Cowgirls will look for that elusive conference victory on Saturday when they face rival Colorado State at Moby Arena, beginning at noon.