WAC Tournament : Leckner Leads Wyoming to Title, 79-75

For the first few months of the season, Eric Leckner was little more than a 6-foot 11-inch figure on the Wyoming basketball team.

He was an All-Western Athletic Conference center without a purpose or a place on a fast-breaking, hard-pressing team.

That was until the Cowboys stumbled through a midseason slump and found they could not win big games without Leckner’s inside play.

That lesson was reinforced Saturday night when Leckner scored 22 points to lead the Cowboys to a 79-75 victory over Texas El Paso for the WAC tournament championship before a crowd of 15,174.

Leckner, a senior from Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, was named the tournament’s most valuable player for the third consecutive year.

Leckner played a near-perfect game, missing only 1 of 10 shots and getting 6 rebounds. His strong inside performance came a night after he had sent the No. 14 Cowboys (26-5) into the championship game with a 19-foot buzzer-beater in the semifinals against Colorado State.

The victory over the Miners (23-9) earned Wyoming its second consecutive WAC tournament title and the conference’s automatic berth in the NCAA tournament.

It was the Cowboys’ ninth victory in a row and 13th in the last 14 games. Wyoming’s resurgence came about the same time that Wyoming Coach Benny Dees abandoned his full-court, pressing game for a more moderate attack in which Leckner was rediscovered.

“We could get the ball inside to him, but we just didn’t pass it to him,” said Fennis Dembo, who had 18 points and 7 rebounds. “But when it’s crunch time, we go to him because it’s an easy two.”

The Miners were playing without center Antonio Davis, who broke his ankle in the quarterfinals against New Mexico. That left 6-8 forward Wayne Campbell to guard Leckner.

Tim Hardaway, who had 21 points, made a three-point play with 1:18 left to move the Miners within 73-70. But the Cowboys sealed the victory by making six free throws in the final 1:15.