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Laramie, Wyo. • On an afternoon when howling wind and drifting snow closed most major highways outside of Laramie, Wyoming blew away Utah State inside the Arena-Auditorium.

Junior wing Jason McManamen scored 20 points and senior guard Josh Adams added 19 on Saturday to lead the Cowboys to a lopsided 84-65 victory over the struggling Aggies.

Wyoming set a school record and matched the most 3-point shots by any team in the country this season by going 20-for-38 from beyond the arc.

The Cowboys attempted only 18 two-point shots in the game.

"On their end, wow," said Utah State coach Tim Duryea. "I thought they were extremely sharp offensively. I thought they won the game — the difference in the game — was their offense. That was one of the most amazing shooting performances that I've seen in 20 years. Unbelievable."

Utah State suffered its fifth straight loss, thanks mainly to Wyoming's 28-5 run to open the second half. When Adams made a 3-pointer with 10:25 remaining, the Cowboys had turned a one-point lead into a 66-42 advantage.

After the game, Duryea was stone-faced as he criticized the Aggies' effort against Wyoming, which had lost four of its previous five games.

"I didn't like our team very much today," Duryea said. "I've really liked coaching this group, but I didn't like this team today. I didn't like approach [and] didn't like the undercurrent of what was going on out there."

What did Duryea see?

"I thought we were too worried what was happening personally and not near worried about what was happening collectively," he said. "When you have those thoughts, they manifest themselves into missed assignments, poor effort [and] poor execution. I just think the basketball gods get you when you don't have the right approach as a group."

Early in the game, Wyoming used a 20-4 run to build a 22-11 lead. But Utah State shot 60 percent from the field in the first half and eventually trailed by only one, 38-37.

The second half?

Utah State missed 13 of its first 14 shots. The Aggies needed 9:15 to score their second basket. The Cowboys went 10-for-17 on 3-pointers.

"We showed a little fight at the end of the first half to get back in it," Duryea said. "But we didn't play for each other today. You saw a team in Wyoming that did play for each other — without an agenda other than winning — and because of that they made each other better. It became contagious, whereas we went the other way."

He wasn't finished.

"… We were the definition of front-runners," he said. "Things started going bad and, instead of banding together, we started having other thoughts. And you can't do that at this level. You can't do that against a team as well-coached as they are."

Jalen Moore led Utah State with 17 points and Chris Smith added 13 for the Aggies, who slipped to 11-11 this season and 3-8 in the Mountain West.

Twitter: @sluhm