October 17, 2021 — The Wyoming Cowboys suffered their first home loss of the season Saturday falling 17-0 to the Fresno State Bulldogs. The loss, the Pokes second in a row, dropped their season mark to 4-2 overall and 0-2 in the Mountain West. Fresno State is now 2-1 in conference play and 5-2 on the season.
The last time Wyoming was shutout in a game was in 2010, a 45-0 loss at Texas Christian University (TCU). It was the second shutout of the season for Fresno State.
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Here are some post-game comments from Wyoming Head Coach Craig Bohl:
“I thought our guys played hard, but we’ve got to play smarter, and we’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the football.” Wyoming’s defense held Fresno State to 259 yards of total offense, half of what the Bulldogs were averaging on the season. UW’s defense also held Fresno State 22 points under its season, scoring average of 39.0 points per game. But turnovers were costly. Wyoming had five turnovers in the contest, four pass interceptions, and one lost fumble. Three of those turnovers were turned into all 17 Fresno State points.
“Obviously, we have to generate some points. It’s important that I don’t make any broad-based comments right now until we watch the tape, but if you look at productivity, you’ve got six (consecutive) quarters without scoring any points, and that’s going to make it hard to beat anybody.” The last time Wyoming put points on the scoreboard was in the second quarter of the 24-14 loss at Air Force on October 9.
“I want to take a hard look at the tape. We need to cull through that. I need to take some time with Tim (Polasek, offensive coordinator) and see what we are doing, what’s our identity, where are we misfiring. “I don’t have rose-colored glasses on. We’ve got to do a rework, and I don’t think it’s a little tweak here or there. It’s always dangerous to completely reshuffle everything, but I’ll look at the two quarterbacks, and we’ll make a decision here this next week.” Levi Williams replaced starting Cowboy quarterback Sean Chambers in the fourth quarter after Chambers threw his third interception of the game. Chambers also lost a fumble in the first quarter. For the game, Chambers was 8 of 23, passing for 111 yards. Williams was 1 of 7 passing for 32 yards and one interception.
“Our traditional tailback runs, we need to be able to do much better. Whether we are missing some cuts, whether we are not getting movement at the point of attack, some perimeter blocking comes into play, but nonetheless, we are not running the ball nearly as well as what we should.” Wyoming ran the ball for 128 yards on 33 attempts. Chambers led the team with 51 yards on 12 carries. Running backs Titus Swen was next with 36 yards on seven carries. Xvander Valladay rushed the ball nine times for 35 yards.
“I thought our defense did some excellent things out there today. He (Jake Haener, Fresno State QB) is a really good quarterback, and he’s been productive against pretty much everybody. I thought we did some good things up there. We established the line of scrimmage and forced them into some throwing situations. I thought that there were some positive things, and we need to build off that.” The Cowboy defense held Fresno State to less than four yards per rushing attempt (163 yards on 43 carries) but registered only one sack and no takeaways. Defensively, the Cowboys were led by linebacker Chad Muma and free safety Esaias Gandy, who were credited with 11 tackles each. Wyoming ended the game with 271 yards of total offense (128 rushing and 149 passing) to out-gain Fresno State. The Bulldogs accounted for 259 yards of total offense (163 rushing and only 96 passing).
Next Up for the Cowboys
The Cowboys will host New Mexico (0-3 in the MW and 2-5 overall) next Saturday, October 23 for Homecoming. New Mexico lost 36-7 at home to Colorado State on Saturday. The game will kick off at 1:30 p.m. The game will be broadcast on WyoRWyoRadio’s7 JACK-FM and 99KSIT.com.
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