Panthers get in final word against Phoenix
GREEN BAY – There was plenty of chirping before, during or after all three games the University of WisconsinGreen Bay men’s basketball team played against in-state rival UW-Milwaukee this season.
In the end, it was the Panthers who got the last word.
UWM beat UWGB, 95-84, in a Horizon League tournament quarterfinal Thursday at the Kress Center, beating the Phoenix here much the way it did to end the regular season last week in Milwaukee.
The Panthers dominated inside against a Phoenix defense that had no answers, outscoring UWGB 54-36 in the paint and treating the crowd of 2,394 to what looked like a dunk contest at times.
UWGB had not allowed 90 or more points all season until UWM did it in back-to-back games.
“You saw weaknesses that we have to address going into next year,” UWGB coach Sundance Wicks said. “We are going to have to defend the basketball at a higher level. As much as I don’t like talking about what is forward right now or what we need to do, that is something we have to become better at. I thought we had really good team defense, but when we get stretched out and we have individual basketball players in one-on-one situations and they isolate us and pick on us a little bit, we are going to have to become better individual defenders.
“You have to guard your yard. It’s one thing to play the game of basketball on the offensive side, but you have to defend your position as well.”
UWM, UWGB stars Freeman, Reynolds finally face off
The game featured the first meeting between UWM standout guard BJ Freeman and UWGB star guard Noah Reynolds after Freeman missed the first game and Reynolds the second.
Reynolds returned after missing the last four games with a high ankle sprain, and despite not being 100%, he scored a team-high 27 points and had six assists and three rebounds in 34 minutes while shooting 11-for-20.
The only problem for UWGB was Freeman was even better.
He scored a game-high 32 points in 36 minutes and shot 10-for-18 while adding eight rebounds and five assists.
Freeman has not been shy about talking during the series this season, but he backed it up.
“I missed the first game, and I heard them chirping a lot (in the second game), couple of people,” said Freeman, whose team will play Northern Kentucky in a Horizon semifinal Monday at the Indiana Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis. “So, I knew next time we were going to play them I was going to take this game extra personal. That’s what it was.”
UWM led by as many as nine points in the first half but was up only 39-35 at halftime, putting UWGB in position to win with a good final 20 minutes.
It certainly started that way after the break, with the Phoenix scoring the first eight points after ending the first half with four straight.
The 12-0 spurt gave UWGB a 43-39 lead, and even when the Phoenix fell behind again, sophomore guard Preston Ruedinger buried a three-pointer to tie the score at 54 with 12 minutes, 46 seconds remaining.
That was the last great moment of UWGB’s season.
UWM responded by scoring 13 straight points. It started with a layup and threepointer from Freeman, followed with a dunk from Langston Wilson, another layup from Freeman, another dunk from Faizon Fields and two free throws from Freeman.
Just like that, it was 67-54 with 9:50 left.
It was the start of a 21-4 run in which the Panthers shot 8-for-12 while forcing the Phoenix to miss seven of eight attempts.
UWGB got back to within 10 several times and finally cut its deficit to single digits with 55 seconds remaining, but it was far too late at that point.
“Great college basketball game, great for the state,” UWM coach Bart Lundy said. “They came out in the second half and really threw a couple punches at us. We called a timeout, and I thought our guys really responded.
“It was great to see BJ and Reynolds on the floor together at the same time. I know Reynolds was not 100%, and I thought he got tired as the game went on, as you can imagine he would coming off injury. But it was great to see both of them. … Just proud of our guys, proud of the journey we have been on.”
UWGB exceeds expectations despite slide
There is a good chance at the beginning of the season that Phoenix fans would have taken 18 wins in Wicks’ first year in Green Bay, considering it went 329 last season, won 16 combined games the previous three and was picked to finish last in the 11-team Horizon.
The campaign was an overall success, but losing Reynolds to injury for the last couple of weeks led to a 1-5 slide to end the season.
A team that was on pace for the best single-season turnaround in Division I history not long ago must instead settle for one of the best.
Wicks had to fight back tears when speaking afterward. They had been flowing in the locker room for 20 minutes by that time.
“You are going to see these tears, they are real,” he said. “You know, life is funny. You can do it all right and still not get the reward. That’s the message. They didn’t have one off-court issue this year. Not one. Not one call after 10 p.m. that wasn’t just a normal dude calling about basketball stuff. Not one call from the police. Not one call from campus security. Not one call from housing about any of our guys doing anything off the floor.
“Probably the first time in my entire 20 years of coaching that has ever happened.”
Wicks wrote on the board that the starting point when he was hired last March was 3-29. All the way across the board he wrote 18-14.
“A year ago, if we’d actually sit here and say you could put a team together at Green Bay and go from 3-29 to 18-14, you would have either been laughed off the stage (or they) would have called you a crazy lunatic,” Wicks said. “Or you might have been called a miracle worker. This team is nothing short of miraculous.
“I told them my favorite part wasn’t the fact that it was 3-29 to 18-14. It was everything in between. The ride these guys took us on, and that this program will continue to go on, is strictly because of the foundation these guys laid.”