LARAMIE, Wyo. — In the long and grand history of college athletic rivalries, few are quite as enduring and perceivable as the rivalry between the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University.
One visit to a basketball game in Laramie’s Arena-Auditorium will have a visitor leaving with the cry “It sucks to be a CSU Ram” stuck firmly in their head. Despite the maxim, Wyoming hasn’t won directly against CSU a single time this academic year.
In total, the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University will face each other in eight different sports in the 2024–25 season. Six of those sports — football, soccer, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, tennis and volleyball — will be in one-on-one competition.
Thus far, five games have been played between the two schools in those six sports. In volleyball, UW lost twice; the UW Football team relinquished the Bronze Boot trophy over to the CSU Rams for the first time in four years back in October; and just a few days ago, the school’s men’s basketball team lost to the Rams 79–63.
Only in soccer did Wyoming not lose. Instead, the teams tied 0–0 on a Halloween trip to Fort Collins earlier this school year.
UW’s next hope is this Saturday, when the school’s women’s basketball team plays CSU at home at 2 p.m. The two teams currently share an identical conference record, though CSU has won more non-conference games.
Then, both basketball teams will get one more chance against each other near the end of their seasons and UW Tennis will play CSU once in April.
After that, the two schools will get to enjoy just one more season competing against each other in athletics before CSU departs the conference for good. It was announced in September that, along with a handful of other MW schools, CSU would be a part of the future Pac-12 as it looks to rebuild.
When CSU departs, the University of Wyoming will be left with a net-negative record against the old rival in multiple sports. In recent history, football, soccer and tennis are the only sports Wyoming has bested the Rams in when they’ve gone face-to-face.
In their overall history, Colorado State leads Wyoming 60–51 in football. Wyoming does, however, lead in both men’s and women’s basketball.
Women’s basketball is not a sport Wyoming has enjoyed supremacy in over recent years, however. This year, though, the Cowgirls may have a chance. Allyson Fertig, Wyoming’s standout center, is leading the entire conference in points scored across all games this season. She also leads the conference in rebounds and field goal percentage and then ranks second in blocks.
Wyoming guard Emily Mellema, who has displayed some offensive explosiveness this season, also ranks high in conference statistics. She ranks fifth in steals, fifth in assists, fifth in assists/turnover ratio and 20th in scoring.
Colorado State has some ballers of their own, though — especially Emma Ronsiek, who shared the MW Pre-Season Co-Player of the Year award with Fertig. She ranks third in the conference in scoring, fourth in field goal percentage, seventh in assists and first in total minutes.
This game, then, is building up to be a battle of the titans. The conference co-players of the year are set to go head-to-head in a pretty evenly matched battle of grit. Furthermore, it might be Wyoming’s only chance to get one up on the school’s rival to the south.
ESPN Analytics is currently giving Wyoming a 62.6% chance to beat Colorado State.
