Battered and bruised

At one point, near the end of today’s game with Valparaiso, coach Rob Jeter looked to his bench for someone to put in the game.  He didn’t see a player that fit what he wanted to do on the floor, so he didn’t put in anyone.

Jeter beat Stevens straight up, and he did it with a battered team.

These are your Panthers, January 2012.

We knew it was going to be hard for Milwaukee to win a championship this season.  The roster is absolutely a championship roster, and barring injury the Panthers would likely be at least top two, probably leading the conference.

But that’s the problem. You can’t bar injury.  It’s part of the game.  When this season concludes, the Milwaukee Panthers very well may have gone to the NCAA Tournament.  They very well may finish fourth, where the Horizon League coaches and SID’s thought they would end up.  They could finish worse, although there seems to be a pretty strong divide between the upper five and lower five in the conference.

What we do know, however, is that this Panthers team would have been a much more difficult foe if they could ever put a full team on the court.

In no game this season will the Panthers put up the preseason projected starting five of Kaylon Williams, Ja’Rob McCallum, James Haarsma, Tony Meier, and Ryan Allen.  For the first several games, Tony Meier was out with a calf injury that sidelined him for well over a month. Once he got back, McCallum hit the bench by re-injuring a wrist that had surgery over the previous summer.  Lonnie Boga, who figured to be Ryan Allen’s top backup, a glue guy and scorer, is missing the entire season with a shoulder injury.

Williams has been battling knee and ankle problems for the past month and a half.

Losing Milli and Vanilli was bad, but it got worse.  Ryan Allen and Kaylon Williams have been paramount to the walking wounded for the past month and more with nagging ankle and knee problems brought on by countless hard bumps and the rigors of playing 30 or more minutes per game.

The guard depth got much thinner when Evan Richard went down with a back injury.  It forced Mitch Roelke – who began college not even as a walk-on but as a manager – into significant minutes the past couple weeks.

In addition to those, Kyle Kelm missed the Wisconsin game where we lost by six.  The post was already thin with the decision to redshirt J.J. Panoske, but injuries and formations have forced the coaching staff to rely on Ryan Haggerty and Christian Wolf in crucial situations.  Not that they have been disappointed – Haggs and Wolf have both been pleasant surprises in their time on the court, even though each is limited offensively.

Is it any wonder why the Panthers struggle getting points?  Williams, Allen, and Meier are all hobbled from their own injuries, it’s hard for them to get the kind of set feet they need to have to make the long distance bombs.  It is quite noticeable when Meier takes shots.

Meanwhile, other Horizon League contenders are enjoying relatively smooth seasons on the injury front.  Of the other four contenders – Cleveland State, Youngstown State, Butler and Valparaiso – only CSU has suffered a truly significant injury, with Sebastian Douglas out for the season.  Every one of the other teams is putting the same team on the floor that they did in November and projected to put out over the summer.

What becomes important the rest of the season, as Milwaukee attempts to win another conference championship and make it to the NCAA Tournament, is for the Panthers to really buckle down, grind it out, continue to play defense at an exceptional level, and get back to scoring points when needed.

It’s going to take an extraordinary amount of heart for the Panthers to overcome the physically demanding stretch run and make it back to the promised land.

PantherU Poll: Valpo

Work has just begun

Butler is our archrival.

All apologies to Green Bay and Valparaiso, who give us strong, emotional rivalries with tight games seemingly every time out.

But this is Butler.  And across the bench, Butler sees us as Milwaukee – while every team in the Horizon League views Butler as a rival, no one quite has their number the way Milwaukee does, to the tune of 10-8 Butler in the last eighteen meetings.

So winning tonight’s game was huge for the program, to overcome the poor free throw shooting and shaky shooting from the field to beat their archrival.

But you know the Carpenter’s song – we’ve only just begun.

Looming beyond Butler is the other eight members of the Horizon League – one of the toughest, hardest, strongest mid-major conferences in the country, not one team on the schedule is an easy out. And it continues Saturday against Valparaiso.

The Crusaders are all that matters right now – they will be coming in hot, thoroughly schooled by a Green Bay Phoenix program that seems to have their number.  They’ll be playing at Milwaukee, in front of a bitter rival as well as many of their own alumni who live in Brew City.

So enjoy the victory over Butler, but keep an eye out – Valpo is right around the corner.

Ugly but they’ll take it

Free throw shooting once again reared its ugly head. So did a swiss cheese defense that allowed Ronald Nored multiple easy drives to the basket.

But the Panthers will take what they can get and turn it into a positive. Holding the Butler Bulldogs to just 17 second-half points, the Milwaukee Panthers improved to 14-8 overall and 7-3 in the Horizon League, 53-42.

Despite hitting bottom by shooting 6-for-18 from the free throw line, the Panthers gutted out the victory by playing stiff defense at the end of the game.  A notable performance at the end came from Ryan Haggerty, who stuffed home the dagger dunk but also won a HUGE loose ball on the other end to preserve the lead for another possession.

Milwaukee held the Bulldogs to 28.1% shooting on the night, including 1-of-16 from long range.  Strong defense came back, as Milwaukee gave up very few open shots, especially along the perimeter.

It was truly a team effort, as the difference between the fifth highest scorer and highest was a mere five points.  James Haarsma went 6-for-9 from the floor and scored 12 points, Ryan Allen scored 11 on 4-of-8 shooting, Paris Gulley had nine, and Tony Meier and Kyle Kelm each scored seven.

It was good to see Gulley get open shots – they weren’t falling, and he wasn’t shooting as much from the perimeter as he should, but he made big shots.  The three-pointer to put Milwaukee up six was the biggest shot of the game.

Also pleasing to Milwaukee fans was the somewhat return of Tony Meier. He scored seven points but hit two of his three attempts beyond the arc.  Meier also pulled down eight rebounds, playing Andrew Smith strong down low.  Kyle Kelm also had his best game in awhile, adding nine rebounds to his docket.

Kaylon Williams had a tough night shooting the ball, but again proved why he is the best point guard in the Horizon League by dishing out 11 assists and putting up the best +/- score (14) of any player on the floor.  The point is, Kaylon Williams is a winner, and he played like one tonight despite not having the best night from the floor.

Elliott Kampen’s three-pointer was the lone bomb that Butler dropped all night.  It was significant, keeping Butler in the game by pulling them within 37-33, but it wasn’t enough.

Shortly after coming into the game with about seven minutes remaining, Andrew Smith scored on a tip-in off a Khyle Marshall miss to bring the score to 41-38 Milwaukee.  That would be the closest Butler would get the rest of the night, as the Panthers clamped down on defense, only allowing four more points from Butler in the final six minutes of the game.

Milwaukee (14-8, 7-3 HL) faces Valparaiso (14-8, 7-3 HL) in a battle of teams with identical records on Saturday at 1 p.m.  The game is at the U.S. Cellular Arena.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Former Green Bay Phoenix head coach Tod Kowalczyk (hereon referred to as ‘poor mans coach k’ with no capitalization or punctuation) made waves a few years ago – seriously, people threw up from motion sickness – by putting his Phoenix in black alternate uniforms for several games in the season, including a road game at Milwaukee.

This year, Green Bay’s Brian Wardle (hereon referred to as Brian Wardle, as he is a good guy) is bringing back the black jerseys in an effort to “Black Out Cancer.”  The initiative is co-sponsored by Bellin Health and Broadway Automotive.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a wonderful way to raise money for cancer awareness and financial need for cancer patients and their families.  I just have a couple questions.

Does the color “black” really make you feel good about cancer? - In America, the color black is significance to death. As a kid, my mother spent much of my childhood working on the HOT unit at Children’s Hospital as an RN working with children suffering from cancer.  Kids from across the country would come to our Children’s Hospital for cancer treatment.  My brother, sister and I would play a part, spending time hanging out with the siblings of cancer patients who were also far from home.  That said, death was common, and I have been to many funerals in my life.  Let me tell you, no one was wearing white at any of those funerals.  Black is the color that evokes thoughts of death, which is why I was confused by its use.

The other question is this: why black uniforms at home, and why against Milwaukee?

The retro jerseys are so plain, and the black alternates reek of imitation.

There are ten universities in the Horizon League.  Only one of them counts Black as one of its school colors, and I’m proud to say that’s OUR color.  So why would Green Bay want to play the game in black against us?  Because, they like the color black.  It looks good. We know this, because we wear it.  Our blood runs black and gold, so no Panthers need convincing that black is a good color.

It just makes me think that Green Bay is playing the same card that the poor mans coach k played so many years ago – they’re trying to be the “bad boys” of Horizon League basketball.

Sorry, Detroit is the bad boys.  And Black is our color.  You guys are the Christmas Color school.  Own it.  Get jolly against cancer next time.

The great thing is that they’re likely going to encourage Green Bay fans to wear black.  So let’s just enjoy the black Phoenix unis and the gold Panther unis.  The Resch Center will look pretty nice completely in Black and Gold!

If you’re at the Resch Center at least 20 minutes before game time, you stand a pretty good chance at snagging one of the 1,000 Alec Brown bobbleheads available at the door.   Let’s hope they come with velcro attached to the bottom, because a stiff breeze might knock them over.