Better days ahead for UWM

On a cold winter’s night Monday, 1,127 people turned out to watch UW-Milwaukee’s men’s basketball team take on Belmont at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena. Granted, it’s finals week, but there were fewer than one dozen students sitting in the student section, not counting the band.

It was so quiet they could have studied for their exams in the arena. You could feel the static electricity in the air.

The talent-challenged Panthers played hard, fought and clawed and scratched every second of every minute, but wound up on the wrong end of a 62-56 score. They have lost five of their last six games and were 4-9 heading into a 10-day break before the start of Horizon League play.

To an outsider, it would be easy to give up on the basketball program, which appears to be mired in apathy and irrelevance. The Bruce Pearl era ended more than a decade ago. Bo Ryan was here and gone. Rob Jeter did some good things but never really returned the program to prominence; when athletic director Amanda Braun showed him the door earlier this year, most of his top players walked out with him.

Still, there are some encouraging signs, if you look hard enough for them.

The players — a hodgepodge of underclassmen and end-of-the-bench types — believe in first-year coach LaVall Jordan and his staff. Jordan is an impressive man with a solid résumé, a bottomless well of patience and the energy and passion it will take to get this thing turned around.

It won’t be easy. It will take several years. But the dwindling number of fans who have stuck with the program are going to be glad they did.

“I say this all the time: I wish I had more time

here,” said senior guard Cody Wichmann, one of a few holdovers who got significant minutes under Jeter. “Not just to be here in Milwaukee but to be with Coach Val and this group of guys.

“I’m truly going to miss everybody here and I can’t say enough about what Coach Val, Coach O (Omar Lowery), Coach Will (Vergollo) and Coach Todd (Townsend) are going to do for this program.”

Jordan would never say it, but there is a considerable talent gap between his team and most of the Panthers’ opponents. His players give great effort but are limited physically. There’s only so much you can do when the other guys are quicker, bigger, jump higher and shoot better.

As a freshman, Wichmann was a member of the UWM team that qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Even last year, the Panthers went 20-13. This, then, is a new reality. Milwaukee will be hardpressed to win eight or nine games this season.

“I think it’s just different

because we have a different style of play,” he said. “I have a little different role now than I had back then, just trying to help these guys and get this program going with Coach Val and trying to leave a legacy here.”

Does Wichmann regret staying? Not for a minute.

“The record isn’t what we want it to be but I’m still doing the things I love for the school I love and with the guys I love, so I can’t really complain,” he said. “A lot of people would like to be in my shoes, so I really have nothing to complain about.”

Jordan has embraced the

challenge of building a program from the ground up. He knows his players aren’t good enough to win most nights, but he loves them for who they are, for how hard they try, for how much they want to improve.

“I’ve been blessed with this group,” he said. “They like to come to practice. They’re fairly low maintenance. We haven’t had any issues and that’s a credit to their parents and how they were raised. They’re really good kids. They just want to get better. They want to win. They want to learn. After a loss, they don’t like it and that’s a good thing. That means their care level is high.”

The players have bought in. They are eager to please Jordan and disappointed when they fall short. Their record might not reflect it, but they are laying a foundation for better times ahead.

“Sometimes (under a new coach), you have some resistance or reluctance, some skepticism, and I haven’t sensed that one bit in this group,” Jordan said. “That’s been the fun part, just coaching them and watching them get better. We’ve been forced to grow up quick. That’s a big challenge, but this group likes a challenge and that makes it fun.”