New tier to UW's season begins in San Diego

LARAMIE - It's not a new season, it's another tier.

That's how University of Wyoming men's basketball coach Larry Shyatt described the start of Mountain West play as UW (7-6) plays at San Diego State (7-6) at 8 tonight at Viejas Arena in San Diego.

Shyatt said every season he shows his players a pyramid of tiers, starting with spring workouts, followed by summer workouts, preseason workouts, preseason practice and the nonconference portion of the schedule.

The next tier is conference play, and Shyatt feels his team is ready.

"How we do will depends on how we play, and always is based on who we're playing," Shyatt said.

The Cowboys are playing the preseason favorites in the MW, but the Aztecs (7-6) have had their struggles. Home losses to Grand Canyon and Arkansas-Little Rock were surprising, as was a loss to San Diego in a game played outdoors at Petco Park in San Diego.

Still, San Diego State has one of the bigger, talented and more versatile lineups in the MW. And, Viejas Arena hasn't been kind to UW as it's lost its last seven games there, six of which have been by double digits.

UW hopes its nonconference schedule, which included six games away from the Arena-Auditorium, will help it take on its first two road games in league play. The Cowboys are the only MW team to open the conference season with two straight road games, and they play four of their first six away from home.

UW went 2-1 in true road games, and 0-3 on neutral courts. It is coming off consecutive losses to Marshall and Houston by a combined 13 points Dec. 21-22 in Las Vegas. However, only one of the Cowboys' six losses away from home were by double-digits.

"My biggest worry was that we would get bombed by some people by playing six road games in our first 13, but it never happened," Shyatt said. "They competed and competed hard. We were in a lot of tight games, which was healthy. We didn't win all of them, but we gave ourselves a shot to win all of them.

"Hopefully some of the work we did on the road with the close losses and a couple of major victories will help this team."

What will help UW is if it can shore some things up defensively. It allowed 90 and 94 points, respectively, in their last two losses to Marshall and Houston. UW has not done that since the 2008-09 season.

The Cowboys face an Aztecs squad that has struggled to score, but they are one of the best defensive teams in the nation (60.2 ppg).

UW also needs to rebound better. It is one of the worst teams in the nation with 31 rebounds per game and nearly a minus-7 rebounding margin.

San Diego State is expected to start three frontcourt players that range from 6-foot-8 to 6-10, and it has two other players on the bench that see a lot of minutes that are between 6-9 and 6-10.

This is the first game between the two teams since UW won 45-43 in the championship game of the MW Tournament in March. Both teams are different now, especially UW with 80 percent of its roster freshmen or sophomores.

"I've told the guys that the conference season is a whole new beat," said senior guard Josh Adams, who was the Most Valuable Player of the MW Tournament.

"There's not a lot of time for 'my bad' or mistakes like that. It's a new tier to our season, and hopefully we can count on the experiences we gained in the nonconference part of our season, and hope to steal a couple of league games early on."

Free throws

UW plays at Nevada Saturday, and the team will stay on the road the entire weekend. ... UW leads the series with San Diego State 40-37, but the Aztecs have won 11 of the last 15 regular-season games. ... San Diego State is 71-10 at home in MW play over the last 10 years, and 17-1 over the last two. ... UW is 6-10 in MW openers, and the last time it opened league play up at San Diego State it won 66-65 on Jan. 3, 2007 as guard James Spencer hit a baseline jumper at the buzzer.