LARAMIE – Sundance Wicks has no interest in coaching yesterday's game.
 
"If you're not evolving," Wyoming's third-year head coach said, "you're selling CDs out of the trunk of your car."
 
When Wicks was a young assistant, his time was measured in VHS tapes.
 
During the 2006-07 season, when Wicks was at Colorado working for Ricardo Patton, he remembers arriving before sunrise and leaving long after dark, much of that time spent not coaching players, but waiting on technology.
 
Three televisions sat side by side in the office. VHS players hummed as staffers copied tape after tape, rewinding, recording, stopping and starting before stuffing the finished product into manila envelopes destined for opponents through the mail.
 
"If it was a two-hour game, it was going to take two hours to dub the entire VHS," Wicks said. "There was no expedited process."
 
The hours piled up. Technology has improved over the years to the point where UW assistants like Nic Reynolds don't even really know what actual video tape looks like.
 
"So, when I tell Coach Reynolds about dubbing VHS to VHS," Wicks said with a laugh, "he just looks at me."
 
Twenty years later, Wicks laughs for a different reason.
 
Today, he can ask a computer a basketball question and receive an answer before a pot of coffee finishes brewing.
 
That transformation has made Laramie an unlikely testing ground in one of college basketball's newest frontiers.
 
The Cowboys have partnered with The Intelligence Search Company (TISC) and are using their artificial intelligence basketball platform, PickAndRoll.AI. The innovative system is designed to do more than break down video. It analyzes offensive and defensive tendencies, evaluates personnel, identifies recruiting fits and delivers detailed reports in minutes instead of hours.

But the relationship extends beyond customer and company.
 
UW has become a case study.
 
The Cowboys are helping shape the platform by providing constant feedback, allowing the software to evolve around the realities of a Division I basketball program.
 
Within minutes of meeting TISC co-founders Arpan Bhattacharya and Mahbod "Moe" Sabbaghi, Wicks sensed something familiar.

Wicks believed in the founders before he believed in the product.

"Within the first 30 minutes of talking to Moe and Arpan I could feel the energy and the passion they had for their product," he said. "You believe in the person more than you believe in what you're buying."

He called Xavier Silas, a former CU standout he coached, who is now an assistant at VMI and introduced him to the company. 
 
"X and I are both enemies of the status quo," Wicks said. "We're outside-the-box thinkers. We love new ideas."
 
Then came the demonstrations.
 
"We started with very basic prompts," Wicks said. "From that point on it just took off."
 
Every week, UW's feedback uncovered another application. Every week, the platform became a little smarter.
 
"Over the course of the last season, about 25 teams played around with the product and Wyoming was one of our first users," Bhattacharya said. "Sundance was so excited and he got his entire staff on the platform very early on and they saw great results."
 
The Cowboys' education with the platform showed up down the stretch. As Wicks and his staff searched for answers, the software challenged conventional thinking. Instead of sticking with larger lineups, the analytics suggested UW's best path forward featured four guards and a smaller, faster lineup.
 
Normally, reaching that conclusion might require hours in a coaches' meeting.
 
"We got turned around in 15 minutes what would have taken us two hours in a war room," Wicks said, "deciding whether or not we should have done this with a bunch of humans having emotions and feelings."
 
The Cowboys embraced the adjustment and won five of their final six games.
 
"I don't think we finished the way we finished without the access to the information and knowledge that we got," Wicks said.
 
That doesn't mean artificial intelligence made the coaching decisions. It simply accelerated the search for answers.
 
"The more you input," Wicks said, "the better the output."
 
Perhaps the greatest gift isn't information.
 
It's time.
 
"You don't need to stay in the office all day as an assistant anymore," Wicks said. "You can spend more time in the gym with your players."
 
That philosophy stretches well beyond scouting reports.
 
During recruiting, PickAndRoll.AI helps identify prospects whose measurable traits align with championship teams.
 
Sports performance coach Jimmy Edel can instantly compare a recruit's physical profile with every Mountain West champion over the past decade.
 
"We don't have to guess," Wicks said.
 
For player development, the technology becomes even more personal.
 
Freshman guard Nasir (Naz) Meyer dreams of modeling his game after NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
 
Instead of simply telling Meyer to watch highlights, Wicks can show him where Gilgeous-Alexander stood statistically after his lone season at Kentucky, identifying the performance indicators that eventually led him to NBA superstardom.
 
The conversations become rooted in evidence instead of opinion.
 
One of the first examples came before Mike Mora played a game for the Cowboys. The 6-foot-6 transfer who averaged 17.2 points with 120 made 3-pointers over the past two seasons at Cal State Monterey Bay, already had his shot profile altered at UW during summer workouts.
 
"It makes you able to trust it," Mora said of the conversations with Wicks about analytics. "I shot a lot of mid-ranges last year and he sat me down in the recruiting process and he had everything, all the numbers, all the A.I. stuff laid out. He was like, look, this is why these shots you're taking are a bad shot. This is why these ones are OK if it's at this point in the shot clock or at this point in the possession.
 
"I think it makes it a lot easier to buy into because if somebody were to say that without the numbers, you'd be like, 'Oh, he doesn't believe in me.' But he has the numbers laid out and shows you why, so it's easy to buy into."
 
The same philosophy shaped Wicks' approach with fifth-year point guard Leland Walker last season.
 
Rather than telling Walker to shoot less, the staff showed him the numbers.
 
When Walker finished with more than four assists and attempted fewer than 13 shots, the team won roughly 85% of its games. When his assists dipped below four while his shot attempts climbed above 15, the Cowboys' winning percentage fell to just 25%.
 
"The hit of the ego is important," Wicks said. "If you just tell a player, 'Don't shoot as much,' the ego response is going to tell you Coach doesn't believe in me."
 
The data shifted the conversation. Instead of criticism, it became affirmation.
 
"This is your strength," Wicks said. "This is what helps us win."
 
Wicks believes that's where artificial intelligence finds its greatest value. Not replacing relationships but strengthening them.
 
"Sometimes film is a love language for somebody," he said. "Sometimes going out to lunch is a love language for somebody."
 
Players, however, ultimately ask a different question.
 
"Can you make me better?"
 
For Wicks, that's the promise of artificial intelligence. Not replacing coaches but helping them coach.
 
TISC's ambitions reach beyond basketball, with football next on the roadmap and applications wherever quick decisions must be made under competitive pressure.
 
"The sheer range of things you can do with it is really broad, and as a result, you can really make this your own," Sabbaghi said. "For Kentucky or Kansas, the sheer amount of dollars you're spending on recruiting warrants you spend a lot of tokens thinking about who the best recruits are. I would say for some of the high majors that we've worked with, they use the platform specifically for recruiting, while the rest of the teams have used it more for player development. But this is not one size fits all."
 
Twenty years ago, Wicks spent his days waiting for VHS tapes to finish copying. Today, he spends them asking better questions.
 
The players still have to defend, rebound, sacrifice and make shots.
 
But the search for answers has never moved faster.
 
Follow Ryan for more stories on Wyoming athletics on X at @By_RyanThorburn on Facebook at Wyoming Athletics and Instagram at wyoathletics. Also follow him at Pokes Insider at Gowyo.com/pokesinsider.
 
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