By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) — MBB Beat Reporter
San Jose State (7-8, 0-3 MW) will take a trek up to the University of Wyoming (13-2, 2-0 MW) on Wednesday with hopes of ending its recent three-game skid and reeling in their first Mountain West win.
The Spartans and Cowboys find themselves located on polar opposite sides of the Mountain West as Wyoming is currently in second and San Jose State sits second to last.
Entering the game as 18-point underdogs, a win would be marked as an unforeseen upset.
Know Your Foe
Leading up to this season, Wyoming has registered hardly any noise in the Mountain West, sitting near .500 or worse in conference play since 2017. At their lowest ebb they went 2-16 in the 2019-20 season.
Murmurs from previous seasons have been swept away as the team now has a legitimate shot to make the March Madness tournament.
A large part of Wyoming’s recent success comes from its shooting beyond the arc, as its 10.1 3-pointers per game is good for 17th in the nation. The Cowboys’ third leading scorer Drake Jeffries is currently the nation’s 5th leading 3-point shooter with a 49.5 percent clip from three. The senior from Illinois is coming off of a euphoric first-half performance against Nevada going for 20 points.
Fast and efficient switching on off-ball screens is one of the 10 commandments of defense and when facing Jeffries, it’s especially sacrosanct. In the clip below, you can see Nevada’s Desmond Cambridge get caught in the weeds for a split second which proved to be enough time for the sleight of hand Jeffries.
While Jeffries is a seminal piece for the Cowboys, the real big ticket item is sophomore forward Graham Ike.
Ike is an old soul sticking to a newer script. He possesses the power to bring an entire stadium down like many centers from the “no blood no foul” days of the 90’s while maintaining body control and foot work to keep him spread out beyond the paint.
His game winner against Utah State featured above puts the peak of his powers on display. He gets the ball with seven seconds at the top of the key in the post, pivots his way to take the defender head on and bullies his way into a breezy shot off the backboard.
Spartans route to victory
As one of the great commanders of the English language Mike Tomlin once said, “Keep the main the thing.”
The main thing for the Spartans is to force Graham Ike out of the paint and put pressure on other Cowboy shooters besides Jeffries to beat them. San Jose State’s roster lacks a player with a similar body type of Ike so they’ll most likely have to rely on double teams from the likes of Tibet Gorener, Trey Anderson and Dishon Robinson.
While the Cowboys hit a ton of threes per game, they aren’t very efficient shooting at a 35% clip.
Offensively, the team will have to cut the 19 turnovers in the previous game against UNLV in half. Spartans don’t necessarily have to set the roof on fire from three, but the sloppy play will be a surefire way to extend their current losing streak from three to four games.
The game will be held at 6 p.m. on the Mountain West Network.