LARAMIE – There isn't a worse feeling than hitting rock bottom in the Border War.
 
That's what it felt like the Cowboys did after losing 88-53 to Colorado State last Saturday in Fort Collins.
 
Wyoming head coach Sundance Wicks was temporarily out of juice and inspirational words at Moby Arena in the aftermath of the distasteful rivalry defeat.
 
"It's extremely frustrating. There's not a lot of things I can say to our guys in that locker room that would make you feel better about how you played out there," Wicks said. "We're going to show this when we play these guys next year or whenever we play them. We'll show them what a non-competitive Border War looks like because I showed them some competitive ones."
 
A little over 72 hours and 20 more minutes of basketball later, the forecast for the 2024-25 Pokes remained bleak.
 
UW trailed Air Force, a three-win team riding a 15-game losing skid into Laramie, 38-28 at the intermission. Trailing the methodical Falcons by 10 points feels like a 20-point deficit.
 
"Desperate," senior guard Obi Agbim said of the situation at halftime.
 
Wicks shortened the rotation and challenged his team to defend, rebound and find a way to survive a Tuesday night rock fight.
 
In the second half the Cowboys went on a 19-2 run, out-rebounding the Falcons 17-10 and outscoring them 9-0 in second chance points down the stretch. UW also went 10-for-14 at the free throw line while limiting Air Force to five free throw attempts over the final 20 minutes.
 
"It's really hard to fight out of the abyss, it's really hard to come out of the depths of despair in dark times. It's really hard to get out of there," Wicks said. "At halftime down 10 our guys coming into the locker room and we're looking at them and challenging them to say, hey, you just have to find more with each other."
 
Agbim scored 14 of his 22 points and Cole Henry scored 12 of his 16 points in the second half to lead the comeback.
 
Jordan Nesbitt finished with a team-high 10 rebounds, Dontaie Allen had 12 points and five rebounds, and A.J. Wills controlled the tempo while scoring seven points with two assists and no turnovers in 36 minutes.
 
"We're going to enjoy this for now because we've had a tough skid here and it's good to enjoy little wins like this, especially getting closer to March," Henry said after the Pokes' ended their five-game losing streak. "It's good to get the feeling of how to win and to be down 10 at halftime and come back and win."
 
UW, which has lost five games against the top three teams in the Mountain West (New Mexico, Utah State and San Diego State) by single digits, continues a more favorable stretch against San Jose State on Saturday at the Arena-Auditorium (2 p.m., MW Network).
 
Wicks said the "competitive resiliency" the Pokes showed against Air Force was a good first step in creating momentum ahead of the MW Tournament March 12-15 in Las Vegas.
 
"You see the teams that carry momentum into March, those are the teams that do well in the conference tournaments and eventually the NCAA Tournament," Henry noted. "You see it every year, you see a really good team get upset in their conference tournament and then they go into March, and they're all discombobulated. The Cinderella runs always happen when those teams build momentum."
 
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