Perhaps others might’ve been fooled after seeing the result of his opponent’s previous game, but Pat Baldwin knew full well what his University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee team was up against Friday night when it hosted Western Michigan Friday night.
WMU was defeated by 30 points its last time out on Monday, at home against Idaho. Never before in his 15 years as the Broncos’ coach had a Steve Hawkins team lost by so much at Read Fieldhouse. If ever Western Michigan was going to be ready to play a game, ready to get back to work after a loss, it was going to be Friday against Baldwin’s Milwaukee Panthers.
“I knew that Western Michigan…would come in here, that they would really be trying to fight and play as hard as they can,” said Baldwin, “particularly after the game that they played against Idaho, so we knew that we would have to withstand a storm and some pressure from them.”
Indeed, Western did come out with gusto, scoring the game’s first six points and taking a 10-point lead just over eight minutes in. Milwaukee hung in, though, trailed by just four at halftime and then delivered a punch of its own to start the second half, earning its first lead and eventually going ahead by five with 13 minutes, 20 seconds left in the contest.
In the end, it wasn’t enough as the Broncos took the lead back, led by as many as 11 points late and sweated out a last-ditch Panthers three-point binge. Western Michigan finally defeated Milwaukee 66-63, the Mid-American Conference preseason favorite holding off the Horizon League upstart in an entertaining out of conference game at UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, the arena once known as the MECCA.
The game wasn’t decided until UWM’s Justin Johnson had a frantic apparent last-second three-point try blocked by WMU standout guard Thomas Wilder. (Johnson’s toe was actually on the line on the shot, it turned out) The Panthers finished the contest on a 13-4 run over the final 2:39, but it was not quite enough as they dropped to 7-6 this season.
An evenly matched game in almost every category just might’ve been decided by a few turnovers in the second half. Baldwin commented on a stretch after Milwaukee took a brief 43-39 lead, when the Panthers followed that with three turnovers in a short span as Western Michigan turned a short deficit into an eight-point lead.
“When you’re in a game like that where it’s really tight, and we’ve had our ups and downs in turnovers,” said Baldwin of his team this year, “to turn the ball over as much as we did was disheartening, especially when we worked so hard to build up a lead.
“That was a crucial time for us, when we could’ve taken care of the ball and withstood the time we needed to give some of our starters a break…I just wished we could’ve sustained and had more poise during that time.”
Even after the home loss, UWM is now 1-1 over its last two games. While such a small subset of a schedule wouldn’t appear to mean much of anything on the surface, there’s a lot to unpack from those two contests.
For one, the Panthers handled a wounded-but-explosive Loyola (Ill.) team-one that had beaten Florida little more than a week earlier-by 17 points in their previous time out, six days before facing a dangerous Western Michigan team. For another, Milwaukee demonstrated in the two games that it can be a more well-rounded offensive team than it had shown of late.
While the offensive tone is set by guards Brock Stull and Jeremiah Bell (more on both in a bit), the Panthers have a pair of sturdy, efficient post players in Brett Prahl and Bryce Nze. UWM was held to just 12 points in the paint all game, though, as the rangy, athletic Broncos took away the Panthers’ inside game, as Baldwin noted. Prahl and Nze combined to attempt just six shots on the night.
Milwaukee did much of its work from outside, hitting 13 of 29 three-pointers, easily a season high for makes. That came on the heels of hitting nine threes against Loyola, six in the first half as the Panthers built a 17-point halftime lead before slowing it down in the second half.
UWM has not been known as a three-point shooting team (it hadn’t made more than seven triples in a game in over a month) but it was excellent from deep in this one.
Two players did considerable damage from beyond the arc. First it was Stull, one of the more underrated players in the country who kept the Panthers in it with 23 points, including six triples.
Bell also hit four from long range on his way to 14 points, and he nearly brought Milwaukee back in the final minutes. The junior with the seemingly limitless lift on his jumper, legs elevating high and flying out at every which angle, hit three threes in the final 94 seconds, and put the Panthers in position to tie in the final seconds.
“I feel like that we have a tough team, and we can go a number of different ways, depending on the game,” said Baldwin. “Our inside game has shown to us and proven to us that we can go in there and go inside and depend on them. I think at times we’ve also shown and we’ve proven that we can rely on our perimeter game as well from the standpoint of making the shots we need to and getting to where we are.”
The Panthers can play multiple ways, and their season could go multiple ways, too. Bare minimum, there’s reason for hope, as even with the loss UWM can draw on what still has to be called a mostly successful non-conference season.
The Panthers notably ripped Iowa State on the road early, and they also have a very good win over Loyola and decent ones against Elon, Florida International and Northern Illinois. Their losses include the likes of Wisconsin, OVC power Belmont and Big Sky contender Montana State. There’s also a 14-point home loss to NCAA Division II Concordia-St. Paul (Minn.), and another at struggling Jacksonville, illustrating the team’s fragility. Overall, though, coming off last year’s 11-24 mark, it looks like progress under Baldwin, the team’s first-year coach.
The Horizon League, on the other hand, has had what has to be called an awful early season run. It ranks 28th in the conference RPI, having won less than a third of its non-conference games.
For a league that long was a regular in the top 15, it hurts. There are good reasons-injuries, eligibility issues, plus few leagues have been picked apart by the sport’s transfer culture-but the bottom line is the league is open for someone to assert themselves, even as Oakland will be a fairly heavy favorite as the Golden Grizzlies become whole.
The Panthers memorably made a run from the 10th seed to the conference tourney final a year ago under one-year coach LaVall Jordan, and they arguably have the best collection of wins in the conference so far this year. It’s not inconceivable that they could be there again at the end.
“We’ve played a really tough non-conference schedule,” said Baldwin. “Most of the teams we’ve played have an opportunity to win their league or be in the running to win their league.
“At this stage, to be where we are, our guys can take solace in the fact in knowing that we’ve played played some really good teams and we’ve beat some really good teams during that stretch. And now in the Horizon League, you can throw our non-conference win total out the window. We’re all zero-zero, and it’s a new ballgame when we get started after Christmas.”
