Young Panthers Ready To Prowl.

[PantherLou]

I seem to recall a team in this town being picked to finish around 14th in the Big East last year. The main reason? Lack of experience.

If my memory serves right, that team ended up finishing 3rd in the Big East, beat the #2 team in the country, and got an at-large to the NCAA.

If MU can have that type of success in the BE, why can't UWM have (relatively) the same success in the HL?

[jhart05]

Very good article.

This year should be a lot of fun to watch going into each game not knowing what to expect.

Last year was fun, but for me I found it hard to fully enjoy the season. Going into each game when your team is expected to win and in most cases win big, can wear on you. Some games it was, "yeah we won, but we should have won by 20". I would never feel truly comfortable and be able to enjoy the game 'till they were up by 10 or 15.

Not that I didn't fully appreciate what that group did for Milwaukee basketball over the last few years. I did. They brought us to the brink of being one of the very top Mid-Majors in the country. Now these new kids have to continue the progress and put us in that group to stay.

Just excited for the season to start and see what these kids are all about.

[milwsport]

kroener3535 said:

milwsport said:

While I agree that no one has seen these guys in a D-1 game yet and no one can say they will for sure win the HL, for the same reason, no one should be saying they can't either.

We should be trying to build a sense of excitement and a buzz for this season to get more fans in the seats. That doesn't happen when even before the first tip, hard core fans are saying we won't contend.

So we are suppose to say that we will win conference to appeal to new fans to build excitement for the program? At least saying we will win conference has a reason behind it now.

No, but we shouldn't be writing the team off before the season even begins either.

[Pantherholic]

i work w/ a few UWM students and more that are just college bball fans and i've been recruiting them for awhile now. i moreso tell them about the indiv. players we have and how once we click, then we'll start to be awesome. when they ask if we'll suck b/c of all the losses i use GB from last year as an example; picked to finish 7th and the 4th or 5th youngest team in all of D1 and they finished tied for 3rd. i just say we won't be as good as last year but we won't finish 7th either.

[pantherdon]

jhart05 said:

Last year was fun, but for me I found it hard to fully enjoy the season. Going into each game when your team is expected to win and in most cases win big, can wear on you. Some games it was, "yeah we won, but we should have won by 20". I would never feel truly comfortable and be able to enjoy the game 'till they were up by 10 or 15.

I know exactly what you mean, but thats what brings us back.
You'd miss it if we won every game by 20.

[uwm97]

milwsport said:

kroener3535 said:

So we are suppose to say that we will win conference to appeal to new fans to build excitement for the program? At least saying we will win conference has a reason behind it now.

No, but we shouldn't be writing the team off before the season even begins either.

I can only speak for myself, and in no way am I "writing the team off." When did I even imply that? I merely stated what is TRUE: many of these kids have never played a D-1 college basketball game before. This does not mean they won't or can't play well. It does mean they are inexperienced. Futhermore, to compare MU's situation last year to our team this year isn't a fair one. MU had an NBA player in Novak coming back to anchor the team. Smith and Hanson are nice players, but in no way do either of them compare to Novak. And this is Jeter's first real recruiting class and is still something of a wild card. Crean had a track record for six or seven years before Dominic James ever started a game.

I think the team will play well this year for the exact reasons I laid out in my previous post. If that's not good enough for some on this board, well, I really don't give a sh*t.

[BBFran]

I think you're getting needlessly defensive, 97. Optimism is not a bad thing, and some people are just excited the long off-season is finally about to end. Too long without college hoops!

I agree that we need to temper our expectations for this year. We'll take our lumps, especially with such a great non-con schedule and with so many good Horizon team (Loyola, Detroit, UIC, GB, Butler) looking for some payback after four years of Panther domination.

But I am very confident in our coaching staff, and I have seen these kids practice. We have some very talented ballplayers. Once Rob whips them into shape and they get some experience, they will be nobody's pushover. I LOVE all the gloom and doom predictions by the writers. Gives us a lot of motivation.

I can't wait for the ball to go up!

[panthers6thman]

Milwaukee 63- 17
Butler 52-28
UIC 48-32
Detroit 47-33
Wright State 39-41
Loyola 38-42
UW-Green Bay 37-43
Cleveland State 20-60
Youngstown State 16-64

If you look at this stat and you're not Milwaukee of course your going to deny that five years establishes a tradition and that there is any hold of power in a league. But then again I'm a UWM fan so I think it does!

[PantherLou]

uwm97 said:

Futhermore, to compare MU's situation last year to our team this year isn't a fair one. MU had an NBA player in Novak coming back to anchor the team. Smith and Hanson are nice players, but in no way do either of them compare to Novak.

I disagree. It's actually a very fair comparison. While Novak certainly blossomed into something special, there was no one outside of MU who thought he would play as well as he did. He certainly was not considered an NBA prospect going into the season.

Secondly, MU plays in the Big East, arguably the best basketball conference in the country. They didn't win the league, but they were in the hunt late in the season, and finished a very respectable 3rd. Do you really think that if we get better than expected (as expected by outsiders) production from key players that we cannot at least stay in the race for the championship? And do you really think that a 3rd place finish in this league is unrealistic?

I am not saying that I expect us to dominate this league like we have in the last 4 years. I am not expecting us to win this league. All I am saying is that we do have a realistic chance to contend in this league, and we may surprise some people along the way.

For this to happen, we are going to need to grow quickly as a team. Remember, MU lost on their home floor to Winthrop early last year. Going into their conference games, expectations were still very low. But they grew as a team, they developed, and they got better.

A similar experience for us is not out of the question.

[pantherdon]

Uh Oh, you mentioned MU again.
Expect crazy or unclejohn to refute what you just said.

[Kroener3535]

I think its realistic to compete for the 2nd or 3rd position in league but the outlandish statements that have plagued the board saying we will win or whatever else is unrealistic. I agree Lou we will be competitive and I also think we beat Loyola at least once this year. Loyola might win the season title but I got a feeling they will lose to someone in the tourney...

[milwsport]

You're right. He said that MU didn't win the Big East. Now we'll have a ton of posts about why they didn't win and how we didn't win the Big East either and furthermore they won the National Championship in 1977 and were in the Final Four four years ago so we have no right to insult them!

[PantherLou]

This is NOT an MU thread! Can we PLEASE keep it on topic??

[Deleted]

Its game day. Drop the MU crap and get excited about a new Panther season. Fire up Milwaukee!

[PantherLou]

kroener3535 said:

I think its realistic to compete for the 2nd or 3rd position in league but the outlandish statements that have plagued the board saying we will win or whatever else is unrealistic. I agree Lou we will be competitive and I also think we beat Loyola at least once this year. Loyola might win the season title but I got a feeling they will lose to someone in the tourney...

You're probably right. I think the league is going to be VERY competitive this year, with many teams in the mix for the championship and many teams feeling like they have a realistic chance at winning the HL tournament.