Your Milwaukee Panthers clinched another easy victory Saturday night at Panther Arena. The NAIA division Cardinal Stritch Wolves looked every bit the smaller, slower, and less talented team.
From the opening tip Milwaukee pressed (literally) its advantage higher and higher as the Wolves bricked and turned over an absurd number of possessions. The Panther lead just kept widening like a giant chasm all the way to the end.
Congrats to the Stritch fans (I was seated right in the middle of them all)- they were loud and proud until the end. Their team is surely better after having battled with this resurgent '22-'23 Milwaukee Panther squad.
The Panthers coughed up just 6 turnovers to the Wolves 25, shot 30.8% from 3pt and 53.2% overall.
The new Milwaukee roster is deep; one can hardly notice any big differences between the first 5 and the next 5 off the bench. I think we will be able to have rested motors on the floor a lot more than we've been used to the past 6 years.
Leading our scorers last night were Angelo Stewart with 18pts, Jalen Johnson with 17pts and 5reb, Elijah Jamison with 16pts, 7reb and Kentrell Pullian with 12pts, 8reb. Markeith Browning added a team-high 5 assists to go with his 5pts.
The win marks Coach Lundy's first victory at Panther Arena; sure to be the first of many. Coach had a memorable quote in the Journal-Sentinel article on this game:
"When you get up by a lot of points you get to see who's going to be disciplined, who's going to be silly, who's going to stick with what we do."
One really gets the feeling that this is a damn talented Milwaukee team from our casual blazing charge through MSOE and Stritch. And although a loss, our effort in the Purdue loss was evident and admirable.
But as one fan noted over on the Panther discussion board, we've yet to play a game that is a good barometer of how good we can be in our moribund conference. Iowa State won't be that game either. The Cream City Classic MTE tournament at the Klotsche with games against fellow mid-majors UC Davis, Boston and SE Missouri State will be a fairly good indicator of just how good or so-so or not good we really are or can be.
The box score attendance count last night was of 2,010 but it seemed higher when the crowd livened up. That said, 1,500 or 2,000 or even 2,500 fans is not enough for the home court advantage we can take advantage of. Many of us have seen what can happen to Panther Arena attendance count and atmosphere when there is a great team playing (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012. 2014, 2016). We can draw 4-5k regularly and should. Just gotta win- a whole lot and consistently.
As the good days and wins stack up- let's win it back into existence.
Next up is another tough P5 road game. This time it's Iowa State in Ames, IA on Sunday November 20th at 5pm CST. Having already gained some experience against one of the best teams in the nation last week at Purdue, I think our team has a reasonable shot at making this more than a buy game beatdown.
Make no mistake though- the Cyclone fans are rabid about their teams. The Hilton Coliseum regularly hosts 10,000+ Iowa State fans. We have to tune all that out and just win- if we are lucky enough to be considered for a March Madness at-large selection some day, these are the kind of road upsets you need. I also don't think you can calculate how much of a psychological boost a road win like this would generate for the team and fans.
At minimum, let's make it close and learn.
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