Wyoming Fires Schroyer

I'm not shocked that I had to write that headline, but I'm certainly surprised it came today as Wyoming fired Heath Schroyer seven games shy of the end of his fourth regular season.

At 8-15, and coming off just a 10-win season a year ago, the move seemed increasingly more inevitable, but the feeling I got by getting this late in the season was that Schroyer would be given the chance to coach through the end of his fourth year.

Apparently the move had been in the works since UW lost by 39 at San Diego State last Saturday. The Pokes posted two hard-fought losses against two of the Mountain West Conference's top teams since then, but apparently that wasn't enough as UW made the announcement today.

When I stopped by athletics director Tom Burman's office just before the news was announced via press release, he offered nothing except for "No comment."

I did catch up with Schroyer as he left his office today. He did not want to formally comment at the time, but said his players took the news very hard.

Schroyer led the program to a much-improved Academic Progress Rate, led one team to the postseason (the College Basketball Invitational) and, quite frankly, handled the mounting criticism and seemingly forgone conclusion with class.

None of that trumps victories, however. The Cowboys won less than 50 games with Schroyer as coach in nearly four years and fans were not happy that he seemed to make excuses after many of the losses. There were also many who didn't like his hiring to begin with and attendance at the Arena-Auditorium has free-falled to all-time lows.

UW says it will start a national search immediately.

We should learn more about the whole thing tomorrow during an 11 a.m. conference call. The Double-A and UW's offices were certainly quiet today as I was in house when the news broke, but found very few folks that wanted to comment on the whole matter.

Stay tuned... as the Star-Tribune will bring you the best coverage of the firing and hiring.