Your Milwaukee Panthers were back in action this Friday night and playing a with a little bit of pep in their step. This may have been due to the return of Patrick Baldwin Jr. who, for the first time all season, seemed to be playing with a lot more energy himself.
DeAndre Gholston (22pts, 4-8 from 3pt) and Baldwin Jr. (13pts, 4reb, 2stl) led the Panther offensive charge against the Mastodons.
A bevy of turnovers, many in the second half, are what fumbled this potential victory away. We need to protect the ball better. Even if that means less transition (which seems to be our best style of play this season). We don't have much time left, but we have a month. Let's hope the team can find a way to efficiently move the ball and score without turning it over so much.
Milwaukee entered the halftime break up 28-24 and all things continued to go well early in the second half.
A series with a huge Jordan Lathon 3ptr and then a Lathon (9pts, 8reb, 6ast) transition dunk made it 41-35, Milwaukee. But everything came apart in the final minutes (again 😞). Milwaukee was up 51-49 with 6:48 left, when the Mastodons took control and poured in a combo of dunks and shots by Damian Chong Qui (12pts). The Panthers would not recover.
Fort Wayne mustered an impressive game-ending 19-4 run and went on to defeat Milwaukee, 70-60.
We didn't shoot particularly well last night, but we held Ft. Wayne to around the same level of shooting. This game might have had a different result, had our coach utilized PBJ more in the crucial minutes at the end.
The Journal-Sentinel even pointed this out, as well as "Another one of UWM's better offensive weapons, Josh Thomas, was invisible throughout and finished scoreless after taking just two shots.". This is true. JT is often nowhere to be found when he is sorely needed. That PBJ and JT have to create their own shots a lot of the time is a travesty of coaching.
FG, 3PT, FT
41.4% 30.4% 83.3%
41.8% 32.0% 69.6%
The good news in all of this is- Patrick Baldwin Jr. is back for the home stretch 🔥🔥🔥. And that, no matter how you feel about how his playing time was limited earlier this season, is a very, very good development.
Perhaps some time off from the ankle was all he needed, and worrywarts like me need to be more patient.
Patient or not, we still face the prospect of a losing season. But something happened this Friday night other than PBJ finally seeming to be solidly and 100% a part of our team. That something was teamwork and comradery. The players seem to be playing for each other and making an effort to get true offensive sets rolling so that we don't have to toss up errant 3s at the end of shot clock. We are playing a step quicker, a step sharper.
All of the big longstanding injury question marks seem to be answered now: Samba Kane is gone from the program, Markeith Browning is back but not yet 100%, Patrick Baldwin Jr. is back and also getting back to 100%. The Panther energy we thought would carry us all season is now in the air again. It can't undo the losses, but with this healthy and more cohesive Panther bunch I do believe we are about to win some meaningful games.
A lot more. Maybe even 4-in-a-row in March.
And that's something... that could lead to something. Keep the hope alive.
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