Fresno State Men's Basketball upsets Wyoming in Mountain West Tournament, advances to quarterfinals

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- On Saturday, the Fresno State Men's Basketball squad mislaid to Wyoming by 39 points astatine the Save Mart Center. It marked the team's 14th league loss, tying a grounds acceptable successful the 1989-90 season.

Four days later, the Bulldogs erstwhile again proved wherefore March is "madness" successful assemblage basketball.

The No. 9 Bulldogs upset No. 8 Wyoming 77-73 successful the opening circular of the Mountain West Tournament Wednesday afternoon. The Bulldogs present beforehand to the quarterfinals vs No. 1 Utah State.

"I thought we needed to play with much pride, with much swag and we did it," Bulldog Head Coach Justin Hutson said connected the tribunal aft the game.

At halftime, Wyoming went into the interruption with a 40-33 lead.

With 14:21 to spell successful the 2nd half, Senior Donavan Yap Jr. yet enactment the Bulldogs backmost connected apical aft 2 made escaped throws to marque it 44-43. In his instrumentality to the desert, the Las Vegas autochthonal finished with 16 points disconnected the seat successful his archetypal crippled since February 10th.

With 5:50 near successful the game, Wyoming wrapped up a 10-0 tally to instrumentality a 9-point pb astatine 67-58. But past the 'Dogs went connected a tally of their own. Senior Isaiah Pope drew a foul aft taking a hard deed portion driving to the basket. Pope would marque some escaped throws to propulsion wrong seven, 67-60. The Utah Tech transportation led the Bulldogs with 22 points.

The turning constituent of the crippled came with conscionable nether 2 minutes near erstwhile Senior PG Isaiah Hill made a layup for his archetypal points of the game, grabbed a bargain connected the Cowboys' ensuing inbounds pass, and scored different layup to marque it a one-point game, 72-71 Wyoming.

Fresno State ended the crippled connected a 12-1 tally successful the last 2:54 of regularisation to propulsion disconnected the upset.

The Bulldogs thrived astatine the line, going (22-23 FT, 95.7%) compared to Wyoming's (15-26 FT, 57.7%).

"Very arrogant of my guys, continuing to fight," Bulldog Head Coach Justin Hutson said aft the game. "It was similar the 6'5 and nether squad retired there. We deserved 1 of these."

Coach Hutson pulled Center Enoch Boakye successful the 2nd half, and enactment 6'7 Senior Leo Colimerio astatine the 5 to marque him the tallest Bulldog connected the court.

Despite appearing to beryllium done for the play with a breached near hand, Senior Donavan Yap Jr. played done wounded to travel disconnected the seat successful the win. "Even though we was down a lot, was wasn't going to springiness up, you cognize we conscionable kept warring until the end," Yap Jr. said.

Senior Isaiah Pope was asked however the squad turned it astir aft losing to Wyoming successful a blowout conscionable days before. "We got down aboriginal that past crippled and I deliberation a batch of america conscionable gave up connected ourselves" Pope said. "Coming into today, this is it. At slightest for maine it could beryllium my past crippled ever. I told the guys if this is my past 40 minutes I'm going to springiness everything I have."

Fresno State present faces the outright league victor and #1-seed Utah State (26-5, 14-4 MW) connected Thursday. The past clip the Bulldogs played the Aggies was backmost astatine the Save Mart Center successful precocious February. Utah State forced overtime connected a last-second slope changeable 3-pointer from Darius Brown II.

FS would spell connected to suffer 77-73 successful overtime. USU besides won the archetypal gathering 83-61 successful Logan, UT backmost connected January 20th.

Tipoff for Thursday's quarterfinal matchup is acceptable for 12:00 p.m. PT with the crippled broadcast connected the CBS Sports Network.

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