Post by Super King on Feb 28, 2011 0:28:32 GMT -6
I usually write about arts & culture, but for this very specific occasion I branched out and wrote a basketball piece. The copy edit is different than what I originally wrote (and in some cases inaccurate), so I figured I'd link to the story that appears in the Post and then print my original draft here:
And I damn well stand by it.
Six years ago, under the tutelage of a former Division 1 assistant-turned Division II national champion coach named Bruce Pearl, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee did the unthinkable. It’s not that they made the NCAA Tournament in a league dominated by Butler University, one of the most storied college basketball programs to ever exist – they had done that two years beforehand – and it wasn’t even that they went all the way to the Sweet Sixteen that year, upsetting nationally-ranked Boston College in the round of 32, a team that had won its first 20 games.
It’s that they diverted the basketball attention of a state dominated by the likes of Marquette and Wisconsin, two schools which had been to Final Fours within the recent decade, to the fourth-tier university in the state, a university that had been idling in obscurity all throughout the 1990s while Green Bay, under then-coach Dick Bennett, made waves in the college basketball world. Then did the same in the early 2000s when Wisconsin made its miracle run, and while Marquette used a superstar of a guard with a misspelled name to do the same.
Pearl would depart for Tennessee the next year, but a passionate fanbase was born and cultivated under his coaching. A ferocious student section that would come to be reviled by opponents’ players, coaches, and fans became the immediate best in the Horizon League. And at the height of UWM’s success, even the next year under new coach Rob Jeter, a former Wisconsin assistant and son of a Green Bay Packers Hall of Famer, UWM’s Horizon League Tournament appearances were near-sellouts. They turned the MECCA-turned-US Cellular Arena back into its old self, a historic arena which had hosted an NCAA-champion Marquette Warriors team and an NBA-champion Milwaukee Bucks team, a loud, vicious prison where postseason dreams went to die.
But then the hard times began. The team won nine wins in 2007. But attendance was still strong. The game that year against arch-rival Green Bay was one of the most raucous in recent memory. Then 14 wins the next year, a season in which five players left the team for one reason or another. Attendance started to sag. Crowds dwindled. Students stayed on campus to drink. They focused more on Marquette and Wisconsin than the team which had once held their interest like rubber cement. When Wisconsin played at the US Cellular Arena that year, the crowd was more than half-red.
But now things have changed. After steady improvement – 17 wins in 2009, 20 wins in 2010 – your Milwaukee Panthers have earned a share of the regular season Horizon League championship for the first time since Jeter’s first year as coach. This means two things: one, that Milwaukee has demonstrated themselves to be the best in the conference through a sensational second-half run in which they won 12 of 16 games and seven in a row at one point; and two, that it’s up to you, the UWM student body, to turn the US Cellular Arena into what it used to be.
The Horizon League Tournament now runs through the Cell. Milwaukee has a bye until Saturday, when they’ll likely play either Detroit or Valparaiso. Both teams came to the Cell in the regular season, both teams left the Cell losers. But student turnout for both games, while encouraging, was nowhere near what it could have been. The Cell is Our House. It’s got Our History hanging on the wall over Our Student Section. We’ve got to fill it the hell up. We’ve got to make it LOUD.
Here’s your challenge: pack the Cell to the rafters. Make demand so furious that the athletic department expands student section capacity back to the wall. Make the Cell a hell on earth for whoever it is we play; and then, when we take the Horizon League Championship for ourselves and punch our next ticket to the NCAA Tournament, make 2,000 yellow shirts deliriously turn Our Floor into a madhouse.
Rob Jeter proved himself this year. Anthony Hill, who stands with 977 career points and 486 career rebounds, proved himself this year. The whole team proved itself this year. Now it’s your turn, students.
Prove yourselves.
It’s that they diverted the basketball attention of a state dominated by the likes of Marquette and Wisconsin, two schools which had been to Final Fours within the recent decade, to the fourth-tier university in the state, a university that had been idling in obscurity all throughout the 1990s while Green Bay, under then-coach Dick Bennett, made waves in the college basketball world. Then did the same in the early 2000s when Wisconsin made its miracle run, and while Marquette used a superstar of a guard with a misspelled name to do the same.
Pearl would depart for Tennessee the next year, but a passionate fanbase was born and cultivated under his coaching. A ferocious student section that would come to be reviled by opponents’ players, coaches, and fans became the immediate best in the Horizon League. And at the height of UWM’s success, even the next year under new coach Rob Jeter, a former Wisconsin assistant and son of a Green Bay Packers Hall of Famer, UWM’s Horizon League Tournament appearances were near-sellouts. They turned the MECCA-turned-US Cellular Arena back into its old self, a historic arena which had hosted an NCAA-champion Marquette Warriors team and an NBA-champion Milwaukee Bucks team, a loud, vicious prison where postseason dreams went to die.
But then the hard times began. The team won nine wins in 2007. But attendance was still strong. The game that year against arch-rival Green Bay was one of the most raucous in recent memory. Then 14 wins the next year, a season in which five players left the team for one reason or another. Attendance started to sag. Crowds dwindled. Students stayed on campus to drink. They focused more on Marquette and Wisconsin than the team which had once held their interest like rubber cement. When Wisconsin played at the US Cellular Arena that year, the crowd was more than half-red.
But now things have changed. After steady improvement – 17 wins in 2009, 20 wins in 2010 – your Milwaukee Panthers have earned a share of the regular season Horizon League championship for the first time since Jeter’s first year as coach. This means two things: one, that Milwaukee has demonstrated themselves to be the best in the conference through a sensational second-half run in which they won 12 of 16 games and seven in a row at one point; and two, that it’s up to you, the UWM student body, to turn the US Cellular Arena into what it used to be.
The Horizon League Tournament now runs through the Cell. Milwaukee has a bye until Saturday, when they’ll likely play either Detroit or Valparaiso. Both teams came to the Cell in the regular season, both teams left the Cell losers. But student turnout for both games, while encouraging, was nowhere near what it could have been. The Cell is Our House. It’s got Our History hanging on the wall over Our Student Section. We’ve got to fill it the hell up. We’ve got to make it LOUD.
Here’s your challenge: pack the Cell to the rafters. Make demand so furious that the athletic department expands student section capacity back to the wall. Make the Cell a hell on earth for whoever it is we play; and then, when we take the Horizon League Championship for ourselves and punch our next ticket to the NCAA Tournament, make 2,000 yellow shirts deliriously turn Our Floor into a madhouse.
Rob Jeter proved himself this year. Anthony Hill, who stands with 977 career points and 486 career rebounds, proved himself this year. The whole team proved itself this year. Now it’s your turn, students.
Prove yourselves.
And I damn well stand by it.
