Brandenburg Homecoming No Party for Aztecs

Back in November, long before the college basketball season began, Eric Leckner was asked what his former coach, Jim Brandenburg, should expect on his return to Wyoming.

“It’s not Brandenburg I feel sorry for,” Leckner said. “It’s the players. They’re the ones who are going to have to play the game.”

His words were prophetic.

Wyoming did more than spoil Brandenburg’s return to Laramie Saturday afternoon. The Cowboys rolled to an 85-59 Western Athletic Conference victory.

The Cowboys beat the Aztecs with a tight man-to-man defense that forced 23 turnovers and a strong second-half from Fennis Dembo, their preseason All-American forward. Dembo scored 16 of his game-high 24 points and had 7 of his game-high 10 rebounds in the second half.

But this was a game in which suspense concerning the outcome was secondary to anticipation of the reaction Brandenburg would receive when he stepped before the sellout crowd of 15,096 at the Arena-Auditorium for the first time as a visiting coach.

His introduction was met by loud boos and a couple of “Jim Who?” signs from the student section opposite the SDSU bench, but the students soon were drowned out by applause from the rest of the arena.

Brandenburg did not hear it that way.

Told that it sounded as though most in the crowd cheered his return, Brandenburg smiled and replied: “Your (applause) meter was different than mine.”

Wyoming guard Reggie Fox heard it differently.

“I didn’t think the crowd did as much to him as they did to his team,” he said. “It was sort of unfair. They took it out on the team. Anything the team did, they really started booing.”

Actually, the crowd had little reason to get excited about the action on the court. The Aztecs (11-15, 4-10 in conference) played like the tired and undermanned team they are.

Two starters--forward Bryan Williams (11 points, 6 turnovers) and forward Rodney Hawkins--were nursing colds, and a third, forward Sam Johnson, led the Aztecs with 14 points despite playing on a sore left knee he twisted Friday in practice.

SDSU did make a game of it for much of the first half. The Aztecs trailed 27-24 with 6:30 left before the Cowboys outscored them, 17-3, to take a 44-27 halftime lead. Dembo then finished them off with his quick second-half start.

“I told him at halftime he is the best basketball player on the floor,” Wyoming Coach Benny Dees said. “I told him, ‘As long as you play defense and rebound, when you square up and are open--shoot.’ ”

Dembo scored 9 of Wyoming’s first 14 points of the second half as the Cowboys broke open the game, building a 58-31 advantage. Wyoming went on to lead by as much as 77-42 with 5:54 to play.

The game was quite different from the first time the teams met four weeks ago, when Wyoming escaped with a 57-56 victory. This game served as further evidence that the Cowboys (22-5, 11-5) apparently have snapped out of their midseason slump. The victory was their ninth in 10 games and fifth straight.

And while beating the next-to-last place team in the conference might not usually be an important victory, the attention surrounding the return of Brandenburg gave this game a heightened impact.

Dees had taken considerable criticism during the Cowboys’ slump. He didn’t need the grief that a loss to Brandenburg would have brought.

“I thought it very unfair to our basketball team and to me as a coach that we’re sitting here 21-5 and if we lose this particular basketball game, we didn’t have a good season,” Dees said. “It would have just about spoiled our season (to lose). But I never mentioned anything about this being a grudge game.”

That showed, as there appeared none of the animosity that was present the first time the teams played. That time, all but Fox shunned Brandenburg as they left the court, and Dees did not shake Brandenburg’s hand.

This time Dees and Brandenburg shook hands, and the players en masse came over to the SDSU bench after the game to shake hands or embrace Brandenburg.

“I knew I was going to, and I was really glad when they did,” Dees said. “They had a lot of feeling in this ballgame. It was a special ballgame for them.”