Panthers Start Final Week Of Regular Season
Feb. 24, 2008
#27: Valparaiso (16-12, 6-9) @ Milwaukee (13-13, 8-7)
Tipoff The Panthers are trying to secure no worse than the fifth seed in the Horizon League Tournament. Milwaukee has dropped five of its last six games overall yet has still gone 10-6 over its last 16 outings. Charlie Swiggett (13 points) and Anthony Hill (nine points) led the way Saturday as UWM dropped an 84-72 contest at Bradley The Crusaders captured a double-overtime win over Miami Saturday and can still climb up the league standings and into a home game in the first round of the league tourney. After tonight's action, UWM wraps up the regular season with home games against Loyola Thursday and UIC Saturday. Monday's game tips off at 8 p.m. CST and can be seen live across eastern Wisconsin on Time Warner Sports. • Game #27 The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee men's basketball team begins the final week of the regular season with a Monday night contest against Valparaiso at the U.S. Cellular Arena. • Scouting The Crusaders Valparaiso enters Monday's contest after a 99-94 double-overtime victory over Miami (Ohio) in a BracketBusters contest Saturday. The Crusaders opened the season 10-1 but have stumbled over the past two months. But, with five players averaging at least 9.7 points per game, Valpo remains a dangerous team in the Horizon League. Shawn Huff leads the Crusaders at 12.3 points per contest after a 32-point outing Saturday.
• History Lesson Thanks to its win in Valparaiso earlier this season, UWM has cut its series deficit with the Crusaders down to one, with Valpo holding a 7-6 all-time edge. But, the Panthers have won four of the last six meetings between the two schools. Valpo's last visit to Milwaukee came in December of 2002, when UWM claimed a 75-61 win. The two schools haven't met at the U.S. Cellular Arena since December of 1995. • First Time With The Crusaders Deion James scored 20 points off the bench and UWM staged a stunning late run without Paige Paulsen to claim a 71-69 win over Valparaiso Jan. 10. The Panthers did it by recovering from a 56-49 deficit with 8:41 to play and by overcoming the absence of the fouled-out Paulsen for the final six-plus minutes. Milwaukee took the lead for good on a Ricky Franklin jumper with 39 seconds left and then hung on by making 5-of-6 free throws after that. • Homecourt Advantage Milwaukee has posted a strong homecourt record since returning downtown to the U.S. Cellular Arena for the 2003 Horizon League Tournament. The Panthers are now 51-18 in regular season and postseason contests at The Cell since their return, and UWM had a 19-game homecourt winning streak until back-to-back home losses to UIC and Missouri State spoiled the run in 2005-06. Combining games at both the Klotsche Center and the U.S. Cellular Arena, UWM is now 56-12 in regular season Horizon League home contests over the last eight-plus seasons. The Panthers are 8-5 at home this season, including wins in six of their last seven home games. • Sorting Out The League One week remains in the Horizon League's regular season and there is still plenty to decide when it comes to seeding for the league tournament. Closest to home, UWM can clinch no worse than the fifth seed in the league tournament with a win Monday night, while the Panthers can still mathematically finish with anywhere between the fourth and eighth slot. Milwaukee can actually still finish in a tie for third place, but would lose a tiebreaker with Cleveland State for the third seed. Around the rest of the league, Butler can clinch the top spot with one more win while Wright State would secure the second spot with another victory. At the bottom, Detroit knows it will be the 10-seed while Youngstown State can climb no higher than the seventh spot. Along with Cleveland State and Milwaukee, UIC, Green Bay, Valpo and Loyola all remain alive for a first round home game in the tournament. • The `08-'09 Schedule The just-completed BracketBusters matchup with Bradley brings UWM's 2008-09 schedule a little closer to being finalized. Already on the docket for the Panthers are road games at Marquette, Wisconsin and South Dakota State as well as a tournament at Iowa State. Milwaukee is then scheduled to host the Braves in a return game while also welcoming Ball State and next year's BracketBusters opponent to the U.S. Cellular Arena. In league play, UWM's two early December contests are scheduled to be home games with Detroit and Wright State, while the Panthers will finish their league slate with five of their final six games on the road. • Winning And Losing UWM has experienced plenty of highs and lows in the first 26 games of the 2007-08 season, finding itself at the .500 mark heading into the final week of the regular season. After enduring a six-game losing streak from late November to mid-December, the Panthers put together a six-game winning streak from late December until the loss at Butler Jan. 12. The winning streak marked UWM's first six-game win streak since Milwaukee won eight-straight from Dec. 17, 2005, to Jan. 11, 2006. Since that run, the Panthers have had a three-game winning streak and a three-game losing streak, with UWM having lost five of its last six games while still having won 10 of its last 16 outings. • Learning The Lessons Of A Challenge Perhaps one of the answers to UWM's much-improved play over the last two months comes from the idea the Panthers' non-league schedule truly got them ready for league play. In fact, the five non-league teams that have beaten UWM are a combined 100-31 entering play this week, and UWM's overall non-league schedule is ranked 57th nationally. In case you haven't paid attention, Wisconsin, Marquette and Drake are all nationally-ranked while Sam Houston State is 19-6 and Northern Iowa is 15-13. • Updating The Roster UWM's roster is officially down to 13 players, with 10 of them active for the rest of the season. Since the start of the year, the Panthers have lost five scholarship players. Those that have departed include Avery Smith (dismissed Nov. 7); Torre Johnson (dismissed Dec. 18); Roman Gentry (left team Dec. 18); Kevin Johnson (left team Dec. 20 - officially dropped from roster Jan. 18); and Tim Flowers (left team Dec. 20 - officially dropped from roster Jan. 23). Of the 13 on the roster, Joe Allen and Zach Holt are both sidelined for the season by injury while Brad Carroll is redshirting this season, though he does dress for games. Walk-ons Deion James and Jason Averkamp are also part of the active roster. • Quick Hits After its win last Saturday, Milwaukee has now beaten its in-state rival from Green Bay 13 times in the last 18 meetings between the two schools. That streak includes wins in nine of the last 10 contests in Milwaukee, with UWM's average margin of victory nearly 17 points per game in those nine wins ... Milwaukee's loss at Cleveland State Wednesday snapped an 11-game winning streak by the Panthers in the series ... the Panthers have rallied from a double-digit second-half deficit to win a game four times this season. Most recently, Milwaukee trailed Green Bay by 12 points with 14 minutes to play Saturday before rallying for a 10-point win ... UWM's three leading scorers in the Green Bay win were all underclassmen. Then junior Deion James led the Panthers in scoring Wednesday at Cleveland State while sophomore Charlie Swiggett and freshman Anthony Hill were the top scorers in the loss at Bradley Saturday ... Allan Hanson made five 3-pointers against Butler Feb. 12 but has made just 13 three-pointers in the other 25 games this season ... UWM has fielded five different starting lineups this season, though the Panthers have used the same starting five over the last 15 games. Seven different players have earned starts. Last season, the Panthers used seven different starting lineups with eight different players earning starts. • Last Time Out Jeremy Crouch scored 24 points, Theron Wilson had 15 and Sam Maniscalco 13 as Bradley captured an 84-72 victory over the UWM Saturday night in an O'Reilly ESPNU BracketBusters contest at Carver Arena. The Panthers were within three points with 14 minutes to play but a 24-10 run over the next six minutes put the Braves in control. Bradley shot 53.7 percent for the game, including 60 percent from the field in the second half. Meanwhile, UWM shot 40 percent from the field and never truly recovered from an extended scoreless stretch in the first half. • Unexpected Contributors Facing a busy week with three league games in seven days - including a game Monday against Valparaiso - UWM made liberal use of its reserves in Saturday's loss at Bradley. Ten players played at least seven minutes in the contest and no one played more than 30 minutes. That led to some unexpected offensive contributions for the Panthers. In fact, sophomore Charlie Swiggett wound up leading Milwaukee in scoring with a season-best 13 points while freshman Anthony Hill added nine points in the final eight minutes. Swiggett's two best collegiate performances have now come on the road against Missouri Valley Conference schools. He scored a collegiate-high 16 points at Missouri State last season. • Scoring Drought One big concern of UWM head coach Rob Jeter heading into the final week of the regular season is his team's penchant to an ill-timed scoring drought. The Panthers have endured a notable scoreless streak in each of its last three outings. By far the longest came in the win just over a week ago against Green Bay, as UWM went 9:38 without a basket. That was countered by Green Bay then going 9:16 without an offensive tally. But, in the two games since then, the Panthers have gone 4:53 of first half without scoring at Cleveland State and 5:32 of the first half without scoring at Bradley. • Bump From The Bench UWM continues to get a wide variety of contributions from its bench, with the Panthers reserves claiming a 36-20 edge in scoring Saturday at Bradley. In addition to the noted performances by Charlie Swiggett and Anthony Hill, junior Deion James and sophomore Kaylan Anderson continue to provide consistent performances. James had six points, five rebounds and three assists Saturday, with that performance coming on the heels of a 16-point outing against Green Bay and an 18-point effort at Cleveland State. He has gone into double digits offensively in eight of the last 14 games. Meanwhile, Anderson has averaged 6.5 ppg in the last five games in which he has appeared and had six points, two rebounds and two assists Saturday at Bradley. • The Skinny On Skinner It is getting harder to find the words to describe the individual emergence of senior Marcus Skinner during the 2007-08 season. Last week he scored 25 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in the overtime loss to Butler and then added nine points and 17 rebounds in the win over Green Bay. The 17 rebounds marked the second-most by a Panther in the school's Division I history. Plus, 10 of his 17 rebounds vs. Green Bay came on the offensive end, with 10 offensive rebounds the most by a Panther since the 1995-96 season. And then just look at the change in his numbers through the season. After the loss to UIC Dec. 6, Skinner was averaging 2.2 points and 2.5 rebounds per game. Then, over the next seven games, Skinner averaged 6.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per contest. Since that time (a string of 11 games), Skinner is averaging 12.1 points and 8.3 rebounds per game. • Change Is Good With the number of roster changes UWM has endured throughout the 2007-08 season, the team's overall individual stats can be a bit deceiving. In fact, a look at the individual stats since the Panthers began playing with their current roster Dec. 19 shows great balance and solid figures in a number of category. Numbers from the last 16 games: Paige Paulsen 14.9 ppg. 6.5 rpg Ricky Franklin 10.2 ppg. 4.1 rpg Marcus Skinner 10.1 ppg, 7.6 rpg, 57.5% Deion James 9.9 ppg, 3.4 rpg Deonte Roberts 8.6 ppg, 3.6 rpg Team Rbs. UWM 36.2/OPP 34.6 Made FTs UWM 236/OPP 212• Simple Stats In-depth analysis could lead to a wide variety of "keys to victory" for a UWM team that has dropped five of its last six outings yet has still won 11 of its last 16 games overall. But, two simple stats might point out the real keys to winning. First, UWM is 12-5 when it either wins in the rebounding battle or the numbers are even, while the Panthers are 1-8 when being outrebounded. Next, UWM is 12-4 when it scores 70 or more points but just 4-9 when allowing 70 or more. • Crashing The Glass The Panthers have done a solid job of late making up for less than stellar field goal shooting by crashing the glass. Milwaukee had 20 offensive rebounds in its win over Green Bay last Saturday and then had 16 more in the loss at Bradley two days ago. Unfortunately, sandwiched in between that was a four-offensive-rebounds night at Cleveland State Wednesday. The 20 offensive boards against the Phoenix marked a season high in the category and the most by the Panthers since they tallied 23 in an overtime win against Detroit last season. Milwaukee also had 27 second-chance points, its high mark this season. • Up Next UWM hosts Loyola Thursday at 7 p.m. before welcoming UIC Saturday at 7 p.m. Saturday will feature both Senior Night and the annual Alumni Game. |
