Panthers near the end of a wild ride
Every season is a journey, right? For the UW-Milwaukee men's basketball team, the past four-plus months have been an uphill climb and a wild ride but also an evolution.
Coming off a miserable end to last season, the Panthers had just two established starters back and another who'd seen 2018-19 from the bench, plus an assortment of transfers and fresh talent.
By the time they hit the final week of the regular season, they were fighting for a home game in the Horizon League tournament home game with two freshmen in the lineup, knowing that if a few more things had gone right they could have been competing for a title or at least within reach of a one- or tworound bye.
With a 70-68 loss to Cleveland State on Thursday night, Milwaukee fell to 710 in the Horizon and 12-17 overall.
Torrey Patton's three-pointer with eight seconds left was the difference, and UWM's Courtney Brown Jr. missed a three at the buzzer.
The Panthers finish the regular season Saturday at home, and the conference tournament begins Tuesday.
“We look at it on a game-by-game basis,” coach Pat Baldwin said of his team's results vs. expectations. “There's a lot of parity in our league.” The day began with three teams tied for third at 9-7 in the conference and two more at 7-9, with all of them playing Thursday and Saturday and with few simple tiebreakers among the five.
The two top-seeded teams byes into the semifinals. Wright State (24-6, 14-3) and Northern Kentucky (21-8, 13-4) meet Friday night in Highland Heights, Kentucky, and then will be off until March 9.
The third-seeded team will have a first-round bye because Detroit Mercy is ineligible for the tournament. Then Nos. 4-6 will host first-round games.
The Panthers finish the regular season with a game at 7 p.m. Saturday against Youngstown State. The Penguins played Thursday at UW-Green Bay in a battle of 9-7 teams.
Could UWM's record be better? From the Dept. of What-Ifs:
❚ The Panthers came within four points of knocking off Wright State.
❚ They were swept by Detroit, which had won just three other league games. Yet curiously, one of those Detroit wins was over second-place Northern Kentucky.
❚ And four times this season the Panthers couldn't hold leads of nine points or more, including the loss Sunday at Detroit in a game Milwaukee led by 17.
“I obviously feel like we could have won more game in the Horizon League, but I feel like we're not out of it,” senior DeAndre Abram said Wednesday. “We're just taking it day by day and trying to put everything together and show really how we can play. Because we have a lot of talent.”
After an 11-game losing streak to end 2018-19 at 9-22 (4-14 in the Horizon League), the Panthers returned starters Abram and Darius Roy, a complement of role players and transfers, some freshmen and redshirt junior point guard Te'Jon Lucas, who was available after sitting out a season after transferring.
Part-time starter Wil Sessoms moved into more of a bench role, averaging less than 13 minutes a game. And senior Bobby Arthur-Williams, who played in all 31 games last season, redshirted after getting hurt early.
“You want to have a solid five throughout the year, but sometimes there's injuries, sometimes there's sickness, which we had during the year, and sometimes there's poor play that forces your hand and you change things up,”
Baldwin said.
Redshirt freshman forward/center C.J. Wilbourn grabbed a spot in the starting lineup from the opening tip, and Brown, a freshman guard/forward, joined him halfway through the schedule.