Townsend dominates Horizon title game
A magical run to the championship game of the Horizon League tournament ended abruptly for the UW-Milwaukee Panthers on Tuesday night. Trey Townsend saw to that.
The reigning player of the year in the conference, the 6-foot-8, 228-pound Townsend took the top-seeded Oakland Golden Grizzlies on his broad shoulders and dominated on both ends with an NCAA Tournament berth on the line.
He put up a monster line of 38 points, 11 rebounds and five assists while playing all 40 minutes in sending the sixth-seeded Panthers to an 83-76 loss at Indiana Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis.
“He did put them on his shoulders and made the winning plays to win a championship,” UWM coach Bart Lundy said. “I want to give all the credit possible to Oakland because they’ve been the best team all year. They’ve been the most consistent team all year, (coach Greg) Kampe has done a great job with that team and to me Trey Townsend was the best player.”
UWM (20-15) entered having won six straight and eight of nine to advance to the conference tournament title game for the first time since 2017 and did almost enough to earn its first invitation to the NCAA Tournament in a decade.
Erik Pratt scored 16 points, Kentrell Pullian 15, BJ Freeman 14 and Langston Wilson 10, and the Panthers actually shot a hair better from the floor than the Golden Grizzlies (43.9% to 43.5%).
But they hit only 4 of 19 three-pointers – 1 of 9 in the decisive second half – attempted two fewer free throws than Oakland made (14 for 19 vs. 21 for 27) and managed only two baskets over the final 4 minutes 25 seconds to seal their fate.
Eight straight points by Wilson and a driving layup by Elijah Jamison gave UWM a 64-60 lead with 6:15 remaining in the game.
Then it was Townsend time. Beginning with a putback of a missed three-pointer by Pewaukee graduate Jack Gohlke, the senior forward rattled off 14 consecutive points.
His jump hook with 2:33 left gave Oakland a 72-70 lead it wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the way, and his life was made easier when Faizon Fields – UWM’s top interior presence – fouled out in the midst of his personal reign of terror.
The Panthers hung tough and got to within 74-72 on a fallaway jumper by Wilson at the 1:46 mark. But Chris Conway’s putback of a rare Townsend miss made it a two-possession game and the Golden Grizzlies hit 7 of 8 free throws down the stretch to put UWM away.
The three final makes came from Townsend, who then blocked a threepoint attempt from Pratt on the other end for the dagger as Oakland completed its season sweep of UWM, 3-0, and claimed its first Horizon League tournament title.
Townsend hit 12 of 22 shots and 14 of 18 free throws.
“We thought going in that we could take away the threes and hopefully they couldn’t make enough twos,” Lundy said. “But in the end he fouled Faizon out. I thought maybe we had enough bodies to go at him, and he got 18 free throws.
“We were tied at 70-70 with 31⁄ to
2 play and he made every play from then on. We missed some shots, but on their end of the floor he made every play.”
Gohlke finished with 15 points on 5for-12 shooting from beyond the arc while Blake Lampman added 12 points and Conway 11 points and 10 rebounds.
Freeman had his run of 10 straight 20-point games halted in going 6 for 17 from the field, including 1 for 5 from beyond the arc and 1 for 1 from the freethrow line.
He sat for a long stretch in the second half as first Pullian and then Wilson carried some of the scoring burden and logged 29 minutes in all – just the second time since late January he failed to log at least 30.
“Oakland doubles everything that he does, and he was struggling a bit with it,” said Lundy. “I brought him out to kind of get his mind right, which is not unusual for what we do. And we started playing well. It was as much him as it was me. He was like, ‘Yeah, let this group play. They’re doing well. Let’s see what happens.’
“And then when we started to struggle a little bit offensively, I went back with him.”
Freeman did set a Horizon League tournament scoring record on a layup with 11:14 remaining in the first half. That basket gave him 95 points, breaking the previous mark of 93 set by Xavier’s Byron Larkin in 1987.
Fields, who was so dominant inside with 16 points and 16 rebounds in the Panthers’ semifinal victory over Northern Kentucky, was saddled with two early fouls and limited to 8 minutes in the first half.
He finished with six points and six rebounds in 21 minutes against Oakland.
UWM leaned more heavily on Wilson and Aaron Franklin as a result and even tapped Darius Duffy and seldomused freshman Simeon Murchison to try and combat Townsend and Conway.
Franklin in particular held his own despite giving up some height and also ended up as the Panthers’ third-leading scorer in the first half with six points in 16 minutes. But he suffered an ankle injury about 6 minutes into the second half and scored only one point the rest of the way while also being whistled for a technical foul.
“Aaron hurt his ankle pretty good,” Lundy said. “But you could tell that Aaron and Darius just weren’t completely in step with everything that we were doing. Just, being out for that long (with injuries; Franklin a broken wrist and Duffy a broken finger earlier in the season), and you get to this stage, you’ve got to play a really good game.”
As for the Panthers’ plans once they return from Indianapolis on Wednesday, Lundy was non-committal. The Panthers competed in the College Basketball Invitational last year and presumably they’d be welcomed back to that or another similar postseason tournament again.
“We’re not sure what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’ll talk to the players. We’ll talk to the administration. And we’ll see what the options are, and if there’s a good option for us.”