Wyoming rolls late behind balanced attack

John McKnight photo
Wyoming freshman Chaundra Sewell looks to make a move Tuesday against BYU. At left is junior Aubrey Vandiver, who scored 19 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

Anything less than a double-double for Aubrey Vandiver is almost unexpected.

Emma Langford is going to get her points, as will Hillary Carlson. For the Wyoming Cowgirls to be successful, balance is the key. That was the case as the Cowgirls rallied in the second half to give Wyoming a big 69-54 win over Brigham Young 69-54 Tuesday in the Arena-Auditorium.

Vandiver scored 19 points and grabbed 14 rebounds for her 10th double-double of the season, Langford added 17 and Carlson nine.

Players like Jade Kennedy (six points), Randi Richardson (seven points) and Kristen Scheffler (11 points) were equally important, especially down the stretch.

"We're not going to win with three players scoring," Wyoming coach Joe Legerski said. "There's no doubt that Hillary, Aubrey and Emma are the ones who get the bulk of the shots. tonight, we had 24 points from Kristen, Jade and Randy. We win by 15 and without those three stepping up, we don't win this basketball game.

"I thought that Randi did a tremendous job in the second half and when Kristen Scheffler steps on the floor, the crowd just gets excited. She is the player who can create for herself and make big shot after big shot."

The Cowgirls (3-2 MWC, 12-5) trailed by seven in the first half, but used strong outside shooting to pull past the Cougars. Wyoming hit 12 of 27 3-pointers in the game (from six players), including 7 of 11 in the second half.

Vandiver hit just four field goals in the game, but three were 3-pointers. She was also 8 of 11 from the free-throw line.

"I thought Aubrey was excellent, there is no way around it," Legerski said. "We're starting to get to the point where we just go, 'it's another double-double.' It's a double-double. she's amazing, five assists, she just controls the game. I gave her a rest for a minute, she plays 39 minutes and she really played well at the end."

Haley Hall and Alexis Kaufusi both scored 11 points for the Cougars (3-1, 12-4).

BYU's full-court pressure bothered Wyoming at times, and the Cougars had the upper hand for much the first half, before the Cowgirls cut the lead to 30-27 at halftime.

Richardson came out with four quick points to begin the second half to give the Cowgirls their first lead since early in the game. The two teams traded leads until the Cowgirls got consecutive 3-pointers by Richardson and Vandiver to break a 40-40 tie with 10 minutes to play. Wyoming outscored BYU 23-14 the rest of the way.

Wyoming not only did a good job of getting back i n the game in the first half, but closing strong.

“I think it was really important to close out the half strong; we didn’t want to let them get it up to five,” Vandiver said. “We played really great defense in the second half, people hit big shots and more importantly, we hit the free throws down the stretch.”

The Cowgirls shot just 31 percent from the field in the first half, but hit 55 percent of their shots (11-of-20) in the second half. Wyoming also had 17 assists (out of 21 field goals).

Wyoming will now have a couple of days off before preparing for Utah Jan. 27 in Salt Lake City.