Cowboys enter second half of non-conference slate with plenty of optimism

Nov. 29—LARAMIE — When Jeff Linder was crafting the University of Wyoming's nonconference men's basketball schedule, he wasn't anticipating being without one of the best forwards in the country.

Linder, who's in his third season as UW's head coach, has seen his team's much-anticipated season stumble to a 3-3 start. The Cowboys were picked to finish second in the Mountain West in the preseason polls and were right outside of the top 25 polls going into the year.

While the Cowboys have been far from the team people expected them to be, that could easily be traced back to the news that junior Graham Ike would miss an extended period of time with a lower leg injury.

"When we scheduled the nonconference schedule, it was hoping that we had our full team intact," Linder said. "It was knowing we needed our full team intact."

Roughly a month into the season, Linder still isn't expecting Ike back on the floor anytime soon.

"Probably not," Linder said when asked if Ike will be available for the start of conference play on Dec. 28 in Fresno, California. "My guess would be sometime in January. When in January? I don't know, but it's not anytime soon. I know that."

Ike averaged 19.5 points and 9.6 rebounds last season and was named the Mountain West preseason player of the year last month. The Cowboys have struggled collectively on both sides of the ball without Ike.

UW is ranked No. 7 in the conference in total offense with 72.5 points per game and No. 8 in total defense with an average of 67.3 points allowed per game.

The Cowboys started the season 2-0, but had their worst loss of the season against Southeastern Louisiana in their third game, a 76-72 loss at home to fall to 2-1. UW bounced back with a 78-71 win over Howard in the first round of last weekend's Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but finished the tournament with back-to-back losses to Drake and Boston College to fall to 3-3 on the year.

To make matters worse, senior guard Hunter Maldonado, a preseason all-conference selection for the Cowboys alongside Ike, missed the majority of UW's 59-48 loss to Boston College after leaving the game with a head injury. Maldonado was pushed by an Eagles player, and his head snapped into teammate Jeremiah Oden's knee.

"It's crazy when you go back and watch it that it wasn't called a fragrant foul when he got pushed with two hands," Linder said. "And, thank God, (Oden) didn't break his leg or tear his ACL on a play like that. For that to go uncalled, that just made zero sense. It's just part of it."

The injury required multiple stitches on the back of his head and neck, but Linder is hopeful Maldonado can return for UW's next game against Santa Clara on Wednesday. Ending the Paradise Jam with two losses and another key injury wasn't exactly how Linder wanted his team to leave the Virgin Islands.

"It's not fun being on the beach when you lose games," Linder said. "... Not having Maldo in that last game against Boston College was really tough. When you have 40 points out of the game (between Maldonado and Ike), I don't care who you are or what team. If you don't have two first-team all-league guys, it makes it hard."

UW will now shift gears to the second half of the crucial nonconference season. The Cowboys will continue to be tested without Ike, starting with a neutral-site matchup against Santa Clara (5-2) on Wednesday in Salt Lake City.

"Hopefully, we'll have Maldo back for Wednesday," Linder said. "We're playing a Santa Clara team that's big and physical. Coach (Herb) Sendek has won a lot of games, and they're just really solid. They don't beat themselves, and we're going to have to do a good job without Graham in terms of our size of keeping the ball out of the paint."

Before his head injury, Maldonado had two of his best games of the season to start the Paradise Jam. Against Howard, Maldonado played 39 minutes and had a game-high 28 points. Two days later, Maldonado scored a team-high 20 points on 6-of-9 shooting against Drake.

"Down in the Virgin Islands, before our first practice, I had to kind of get in and shock him a little bit, knowing that he wasn't playing at the level we needed him to play at for us to have a chance," Linder said. "Luckily for him, he's mature enough to handle that and respond the right way.

"Those first two games in the Virgin Islands, I think he played like the Maldo that is first-team, all-league player of the year type guy. He has to play that way in order to give us a chance to win."

Linder has learned plenty about his team through the first six games of the season, both good and bad. One of the biggest things that sticks out is how different this year's team is, despite having plenty of familiar faces from a year ago.

"This year's team is not last year's team," Linder said. "That's kind of my job right now is to try and figure out who kind of gives us the best chance to win games. Right now, the way that we're going, it's still kind of up in the air."

While Linder may not have each player's role carved out just yet, he has an idea of how many players he wants to rotate into games regularly going forward.

"Last year at this time, we had our roster set and our rotation set," Linder said. "I think we're still trying to figure that out. Part of that, too, is the players trying to make that job easy for me to decide whether they play more or they don't. I think that's where we've had a lot of inconsistency. I think as we move forward, we're really going to try and tighten the rotation down to probably eight guys."

The Cowboys will tip off with Santa Clara at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Salt Lake City. UW will return home to host Grand Canyon (5-2) at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Arena-Auditorium.

Alex Taylor covers the University of Wyoming for WyoSports. He can be reached at ataylor@wyosports.net or 269-364-3560. Follow him on Twitter at @alex_m_taylor22