Utah duo too much for Cowgirls

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

In a battle of go-to players, it was no contest. Utah’s combination of Kalee Whipple and Morgan Warburton were too much for the Cowgirls, as Utah opened Mountain West Conference play with a convincing 70-52 win over Wyoming Wednesday at the Arena-Auditorium.

With senior Megan McGuffey gutting out a tough night while suffering from the effects of the flu, it was up to Cowgirl freshmen Emma Langford and Kristen Scheffler to go up against arguably the best one-two punch in the league.

Whipple and Warburton were money, as they combined for 75 percent of the team’s points. Whipple scored a career-high 32 points and Warburton, the MWC Preseason Player of the Year, added 21.

After an early Wyoming lead, the Cowgirls had no answer.

“I think tonight what we witnessed was a team with two experienced, veteran, talented players,” Wyoming coach Joe Legerski said. “We knew going in tonight that we had to slow Whipple and Warburton down. That’s real easy to talk about; it’s very difficult to accomplish. I thought Kristen Scheffler did as good of a job as any freshman could do with Warburton. I was very proud of her effort. We just did not have an answer defensively for Whipple. She shot the ball from 3, she took it to the basket, she was able to make a lot of plays.”

Whipple, who also grabbed 10 rebounds, was 12-of-19 from the field, including 5 of 7 3-pointers. She has scored 82 points in her last three games, including 31 last week in the win over USC.

“Kalee Whipple and Morgan Warburton are obviously very good and I think that as good as Emma Langford and Kristen Scheffler are going to be, those are very tough matchups for young kids, and I think that showed more than anything in experience.”

Wyoming sophomore Hillary Carlson, who led the Cowgirls with 19 points off of the bench, said they knew what they had to do defensively in the game, but it just didn’t happen.

“We tried to scout them and we knew we had to take those two away, but they are good players,” Carlson said.

Scheffler, who scored nine of her 11 points in the second half, said it was a tough night defensively as well.

“For me, my assignment was Warburton and you can’t take a break,” Scheffler said. “It was real frustrating. You get tired and you want to give up, but you can’t. We have to play 40 minutes. It’s tough, but it is something we are going to have to do the rest of the conference games.”

Offensively, other than a few good moments early and Carlson’s presence in the second half, it was also a tough night for the Cowgirls. Wyoming shot just 32 percent in the game and 22 percent in the first half. Wyoming hit just 4 of 22 3-pointers.

Playing defense when the shots don’t fall was the only way the Cowgirls would be able to stay in the game. At least, that was the plan … again.

“For me, my shot wasn’t falling, so I worked hard on defense so I could help the team out that way,” Scheffler said.