Wyoming ‘Home’ for the Holiday

They’re back.

Members of the University of Wyoming football team shuffled down the steps from the airplane to the Lindbergh Field ground for the third time in 12 months Saturday. San Diego has become a second home to the Cowboys, who will play the other Cowboys from Oklahoma State Friday in the Sea World Holiday Bowl.

Wyoming players and coaches have collected a few memories from previous trips. Some good. Some bad.

The good came Oct. 8. Wyoming dismantled San Diego State, 55-27.

The bad came about this time last year. Wyoming led Iowa in the 1987 Holiday Bowl, 12-0, in the first quarter and 19-7 at halftime, but fell victim to a scoring drought in the second half and lost, 20-19.

Sound familiar? San Diego State lost to the Hawkeyes by a point in the Holiday Bowl the previous year.

Friday, one way or another, better or worse, Wyoming will make it 2 out of 3. To make it two victories instead of two losses, all Wyoming has to do is stop Heisman Trophy winner Barry Sanders. Some fun.

So the questions are: Can they stop him? And if so, how?

“God I don’t know,” Wyoming Coach Paul Roach said. “I don’t know whether or not there’s a way of stopping him. He must lead the nation in broken tackles. He goes just as strong in the fourth quarter as he does in the first.”

All those involved in this game are predicting a lot of points. Oklahoma State offensive lineman Jason Kidder said Friday: “It could very well be a 70-69 game.”

Roach won’t go that far, but he expects points in bunches.

“On paper,” he said, “it would seem the game would be kind of high-scoring.”

Consider Wyoming (11-1) has averaged 45 points a game this year, and Oklahoma State (9-2) has averaged 47.

“It’s going to be a wild one,” Wyoming quarterback Randy Welniak said. “I’ll guarantee you that.”

So, Randy, how many points can you put on the board?

“I hope a couple more than them,” he said.

Welniak is 12-4 as Wyoming’s starter and has thrown for 3,074 yards and 24 touchdowns. He also has rushed for 14 touchdowns. Perhaps more important, though, is his experience of being at last year’s Holiday Bowl (he was a reserve). He said he feels more comfortable this year. Last year, he said, Wyoming was just happy to be playing in a bowl game.

“We should have never lost,” he said. “That hurt us. It really did. We knew we should have won the game but we didn’t. You really can’t dwell on the past but you have to learn from those mistakes and, hopefully, if we focus on this game a little more than we did last year, we should be all right.”

Roach will let his players take today off; last year, they practiced on Christmas. But Monday, he expects them to be ready to work. Practice will go 1 hour 50 minutes each day. Curfews will get stricter as the game nears.

Roach said he feels good to be back in San Diego. To be sure, the weather compares favorably with Laramie’s. When the team boarded the plane Saturday, the thermometer read somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees. So the overcast skies didn’t bother players and coaches too much when they arrived here.

“These people think it’s chilly here,” said Roach, laughing.

Try spending some time in Laramie, Welniak said.

“You can’t beat this,” he said to a crowd of reporters. “At least it’s warm. You guys might not think so, but I think it’s great.”

He thinks the grass at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium is great, too. Wyoming turned in its worst performances of the year in the last two games of the regular season on artificial turf, losing to University of Houston at the Astrodome, 34-10, and narrowly defeating Hawaii, 28-22, in Honolulu.

Notes

George Dozier, a Wyoming strong safety, is home for Christmas. Dozier is from La Mesa and transferred to Wyoming last year from Southwest Community College. A junior, Dozier made the first of his three starts this season against the Aztecs. “It’s a double treat for me coming home,” he said. “I should have a lot of family here watching me.” . . . Roach said all of his players passed their drug tests and nobody was left in Wyoming. Questionable for the game are offensive lineman Shawn Wehrer (knee) and split end Ted Gilmore (knee).