SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – As Carolina Cowboys head coach Jerome Davis returned to the locker room following his team’s last Monster Energy Team Challenge, presented by Camping World, matchup with the Nashville Stampede, he smiled at team officials.

“A win’s a win,” he said.

It may not have been the kind of win the heavy-hitting Cowboys are used to – their average score in the 2024 regular season was 204.78 points per game – but Davis and the boys in Tarheel blue are happy with a scrappy win all the same.

At the PREMIER Bankcard PBR Sioux Falls, presented by Cooper Tires, the Cowboys downed the Stampede 90.5-0 in the final installment of the Smokey Mountain Showdown.

“It’s not the standards that we hope for, but we got a W at the end of the day,” Davis said. “Daylon (Swearingen) came with his game tonight, and he really saved the team. That’s one thing about it – we are a team, so we just kept coming. The guys kept fighting. We got a W out of here, so we’ll move forward from here, and it was a good weekend.”

Indeed, the Cowboys got walk-off fireworks from their superstar. The 2022 PBR World Champion walked things off with a 90.5-point ride aboard Lari’s Speck, earning the Round 1 win as well as the victory for his team.

It was a nice statement win as the Cowboys had been down 2-0 to the Stampede in METC action to that point. They dropped the first matchup 251-0 in Chicago in January and then lost a 256-85.5 contest in Louisville in March.

The Cowboys are a notably different team during the METC than they were in 2024, though, as 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis does TV commentary during the Unleash The Beast season, and Sage Steele Kimzey signed with the Austin Gamblers in November.

This is a team perhaps in transition, and the METC has given Davis a bit of a trial period.

“We kicked some different ideas around leading up to this, and that’s what’s good about these games within a game – we can try some different things, try different guys out, and kind of move them around how we do it and how we want to do our lineup,” Davis said. “We kind of change things and try new things. So I’m pretty excited about where we’re at with it relative to the new year.”

The most exciting development of late for Carolina is the addition of Clay Guiton, who they acquired from the Oklahoma Wildcatters in exchange for their 2025 and 2026 first-round draft picks and cash considerations.

RELATED: Carolina Cowboys acquire North Carolinian Clay Guiton in PBR Teams trade with Oklahoma Wildcatters

Guiton was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 PBR Teams New Rider Draft and hails from Cherryville, North Carolina. Davis grew up with Guiton’s father and has known the 19-year-old since he was little.

The trade happened too late for Guiton to be officially suited up for Carolina in Sioux Falls, but he rode I Hate You for 87 points and was in the locker room with his new team, sporting a Cowboys jersey.

“Man, I’m pumped,” Davis said of his new acquisition. “Clay grew up around the house down there. I’ve watched him since he was a kid. He got gone way before we could ever get to him in the draft, but when opportunity knocked and we were able to get our hands on him, we all talked. We talked with the whole team, and every guy said, ‘Yeah, let’s put him in here. He’ll fit what we do with the Carolina Cowboys.’ And with a bonus, he lives right there in Carolina, so that’s even better. I’m really pumped about bringing Clay in, bringing him onto our team. Him and Ethan (Winckler) have been buddies for a long time, so it’s going to be good. I’m really excited to have him.”

Of course, this means that the Cowboys won’t have a first-round pick in the 2025 PBR Teams New Rider Draft on May 20 in Austin, Texas. Previously slotted in at No. 10 overall, that pick now belongs to the Wildcatters.

“It’s one of them deals now where it was way down,” Davis said of their draft position. “We had a pretty good year last year, so at the end of the day, we weren’t going to be at the top of the draft. And when we could do some trading and get Clay, I felt like we really stepped our game up. That’s why we did the trade.”

The Cowboys may be one of the quieter teams on hand in Austin next month, but don’t expect them to stay quiet when the 2025 PBR Teams season kicks off with Wildcatter Days on July 11-13 in Oklahoma City.

All the tinkering and testing Davis and assistant coach Robson Palermo did during the METC could very well pay off.

“We had some new guys we tried. We put guys in different places,” Davis said. “It was good to put Daylon in that bottom spot and him come through tonight. That was pretty cool.”

“Will we do that in the regular season? I don’t know,” he said with a coy smile. “We’ll see. But it sure worked good tonight.”

Photo courtesy of Bull Stock Media