LARAMIE – Sundance Wicks noted during his introductory press conference in May that Wyoming basketball must do more with less in this new era of college athletics.
 
"We have phenomenal resources, but we have to play Moneyball a little bit," Wicks said, referencing the Michael Lewis book and 2011 film. "We're the Oakland A's and the Yankees are out there, right? We're not sitting here trying to compete with the Yankees out there. We're trying to do it the way we need to do it. We're going to think differently."
 
Three months after returning to his home state as UW's head coach, Wicks announced the hiring of Patrick Stacy as the program's general manager.
 
Stacy dreamed of becoming the next Bill Beane, the legendary A's general manager, before an unexpected journey in the analytical and scouting side of basketball began while he was a student at Loyola-Chicago.
 
"I was in my dorm just doing baseball stats because I wanted to be a baseball GM. I stopped by (the basketball) offices and pretty much showed them what I was doing from a baseball standpoint," Stacy said. "I was like, OK, can I help you guys out with some basketball stuff? I had only played through sixth grade, and I was a wrestler growing up and didn't even know that much."
 
Loyola-Chicago assistant coach Bryan Mullins listened to Stacy's pitch. Head coach Porter Moser, now in the same position at Oklahoma, agreed to let the ambitious undergraduate write a scouting report on the Ramblers' first opponent, Alcorn State, ahead of the 2016-17 opener.
 
"I kind of ran with it," Stacy said. "It really just kind of evolved and they let me take the bull by the horns there."
 
Stacy was Loyola-Chicago's analytical manager during the team's Cinderella 2017-18 season that ended at the Final Four.
 
"That was a magical run," Stacy said. "There were fortunate bounces, and Sister Jean did her part getting us to the Final Four. That was awesome. No one would have ever thought that."
 
After graduating, Stacy worked in corporate finance in Chicago for four years while also continuing to assist the Ramblers in his spare time.
 
"I was thinking about how I was taking days off to do these other jobs, and I was like, I'm in the wrong profession," Stacy said.
 
Stacy followed his passion and founded Jam Basketball Intelligence, a company which provides analytics and scouting to college programs. He sent out hundreds of cold emails to teams across the country and longtime Kansas assistant Kurtis Townsend responded, which led to the Jayhawks becoming one of his first clients.
 
"(Townsend said) I've been scouting Baylor for 20 years and this is an awesome scout," Stacy said Rock-Chalking proposal. "We talked about the price and went from there. I was shocked to see Kansas basketball in my inbox."
 
Wicks was added to the list of clients when he became the head coach at Green Bay before the 2023-24 season. The Phoenix went from three wins the year before to 18 wins, the ninth-best turnaround in NCAA Division I history.
 
"There was just unmatched chemistry from the first call. He was telling me how to scale my business and he was awesome, typical Sunny," Stacy said. "Three or four games in at Green Bay, they were messing with the lineups trying to get more efficient and from there I was probably talking to him after every game or every week he was calling.
 
"Once the portal started in the offseason, we did like an hour talk on what he values and building out his own specific model for stuff that he values. He was definitely my most hands-on client."
 
The relationship led to Wicks – who brought assistants Pat Monaghan and Nic Reynolds with him from Green Bay – adding Stacy to the UW staff in the Beane role.
 
The staff added 10 new players in less than four weeks after Jeff Linder left late in the cycle to become an assistant at Texas Tech.
 
"He got the job late and the good thing for me growing with it is we have what we have, so how can we optimize them and get them to be the best versions of themselves?" Stacy said. "I think we've seen through the season we've gotten better."
 
Stacy predicted before the season the Pokes would be an outstanding shooting team. That's what the math indicated.
 
"We shot like crap early on, right? I'm sitting here like, hey, GM, great job, way to run the numbers," Wicks quipped. "If the numbers tell you a story you've got to kind of believe them in a way. It's our job to make those numbers work with the personnel, so there's the manalytics and the analytics. We've found a little bit of that flow; we've found a little bit of that alignment."
 
The Cowboys struggled from the perimeter during non-conference play and during a recent three-game skid in the Mountain West.
 
But Stacy's numbers didn't lie.
 
UW leads MW in 3-point field-goal percentage (.407) in conference games and made 14 shots behind the arc during Tuesday's 63-61 victory at UNLV.
 
Obi Agbim is the MW's second-leading scorer (18.3 ppg) and shooting 42.1% on 3s. Dontaie Allen, who was a miserable 4-for-34 (11.8%) on 3s in non-conference play, is a blistering 9-for-34 (55.9%) in conference games.
 
"Sunny put the trust in Pat to tell us what we were going to be good at and at first, we weren't good, but it all worked out," forward Cole Henry said. "Obi is the second-best shooter in the country, Dontaie has been lights out in conference. It just took us some time to find our way and eventually Pat was right."
 
Henry was an efficient player at Northern Iowa, where he played about 12 minutes a game, defended at a high level and took high-percentage shots. Stacy used analytics to identify the 6-foot-9, 240-pound senior's sweet spots on offense.
 
"Pat showed me my spots are on the left block and shooting my floater, which he said I'm 70 percent on," Henry said. "I always thought that was a bad shot. I didn't know I made it that much. It gives me confidence to hear from Pat, here are your numbers, here's the film, keep doing it. That's the type of confidence Pat's analytics can instill in you."
 
Studying spreadsheets in an office is much different than being on a coaching staff. Stacy has been observing this on-court chemistry experiment every day in practice since arriving in Laramie.
 
"You are not just winning a basketball game based on a math equation. There's a certain level of feel and understanding what guys do effectively," Stacy said. "There are so many things that factor into how we play. Before the numbers are right and that strategy is implemented you have to have the right guys with a tough mentality. At the end of the day, it's a physical competition. It's about toughness, athleticism, being the best and imposing your will and being able to get the job done.
 
"With numbers you can implement a strategy to help yourself have more of an edge, but sports are sports and it's man on man and being the better man."
 
Wicks admitted the Pokes were kind of an analytical nightmare early in the season. The team has slowed its pace of play, which has helped cut down on turnovers while shifting the focus to defense and rebounding.
 
When UW is "in the flow" like it was in Las Vegas – the visitors had 18 assists on 22 made baskets to escape with a road win over the Rebels for the first time since 2003 – this is a dangerous team.
 
"He's a relentlessly optimistic human being, which is what I love about him," Wicks said of Stacy. "He'll come in here and be like, 'Coach, I told you. We're right where we need to be.' …
 
"It's extremely important to have a guy that can tell you this guy does this really well, trust it and now your job as a coach is to make that work."
 
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