Your Milwaukee Panthers have an offensive strategy problem.
Milwaukee (10-5, 3-1) succumbed to a withering secret defensive strategy deployed by reigning Horizon League Tourney champion Oakland Thursday night at the O'Rena in Rochester Hills, Michigan: the notorious "zone" defense.
The Panthers were utterly shut down the entire night by a tactical, persistent OU backcourt and an imposing Grizzlies front line, making our stars like Themus Fulks and Jamichael Stillwell look very pedestrian (Fulks was kept very much away from the hoop and committed a slew of costly turnovers). Stillwell didn't strike any fear into OU. Erik Pratt and Kentrell Pullian were almost non-factors.
It was a long, disappointing night in Michigan.
There is not yet a box score posted for the game, but it would appear that this was one of the sloppiest games all year- shooting percentages and turnovers were atrocious.
More than anything else, Oakland played a zone that completed flummoxed and suffocated the Panthers. We had no answer. Despite Wright State and Oakland throwing zones at us repeatedly in the past two seasons, we seemed to react to this zone as if it were an unwelcomed surprise.
We must do better and break up zones via passing and the running of some offense that involves the player and ball positioning and motion necessary to take advantage of the static nature of zone defenses (everything has a weakness, everything has +/-). To have Oakland just sag that zone all night and us have nothing better to answer it than to get immediately trapped or commit an offensive foul is in a word- inexcusable.
The Horizon League is a better conference this season. None of these league contests are going to be cakewalks. But this game, in which we were road favorites, was a virtual cakewalk for Oakland.
This game exposed weaknesses that we all knew could bite us bigtime at some point this season (lack of defense, chiefly among them)- defense, overall shooting accuracy and efficiency, ball control). And so Milwaukee lost this road battle, and it was neither close nor fun to watch.
We play next at Detroit this Saturday at 12pm CST. That'll need to be a bounce-back game. And the start of another, longer winning streak.
go panthers.
tilt the floor. 🏆🏀
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