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Post by reginaldkdwight on Jan 28, 2023 13:19:56 GMT -6
I mean he’s taller than Angelo Stuart and a better scorer And how much does Angelo play? Gelo was 12th in the country last year in JUCO scoring so no he isn’t a better scorer. Yeah the step up from HS to even low major D1 is so huge. Angelo would cook that kid.
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Post by ghostofdylan on Jan 31, 2023 12:38:28 GMT -6
Drat! I can't see anything!
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Post by Cactus Panther on Jan 31, 2023 13:20:25 GMT -6
UWM has struggled to recruit in and around Milwaukee in the recent past. Here's how it hopes to change that. Curt Hogg Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Atlanta. Houston. Baton Rouge. Queens, New York. Selma, North Carolina. Wau, South Sudan.
These cities all represent a different hometown for a player on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee men’s basketball team, a program that covers all parts of the country on its roster and even reaches across international waters.
Yet what’s hard to not notice is the dearth of players who are from the city represented by the black-and-gold ‘Milwaukee’ on their chest – or, heck, even from the state as a whole.
Freshman Vinko Polovic, a walk-on redshirt freshman from Franklin High School, is the lone Wisconsin native on the team, part of a trend that developed in recent years of the Panthers struggling to recruit in-state talent.
The Panthers have signed only three scholarship recruits out of high school from Wisconsin since Pat Baldwin took over as head coach in 2017. Each spent just one year with the program.
Over the last 11 seasons, the Panthers have gotten 2,992 points from in-state recruits, or an average of just 9.1 per game. Only one notable contributor to that total, Milwaukee Washington grad Te’Jon Lucas, was from the city, and two other key figures, East Troy’s Brett Prahl and Sussex Hamilton’s Patrick Baldwin Jr., were from the suburbs.
“It felt like the program, for a while,” said Panthers assistant coach Jose Winston, “lost touch with the city.”
Winston, head coach Bart Lundy and the rest of the Panthers staff, hope to change that.
“We have a mindset here. We believe that we're the best team in the state, period,” Winston said. “So we don't care if it's a top-tier kid or if it's a kid in the middle. If you fit our system, we're gonna go after you. We're going to recruit you and we're gonna recruit you hard.
“We believe that Milwaukee is a top-tier program. You can see our practice facility. We play at Panther Arena, one of the best venues in college. I mean, we're willing to compete with anybody going after any kid.”
A pair of recruiting aces in the Milwaukee area
Having Winston on staff, Lundy believes, allows the Panthers to start at first base when they hit the recruiting trail within the Milwaukee metro area.
Winston’s name is often invoked among the all-time greats in Milwaukee high school basketball. As a point guard at Milwaukee Vincent in the late 1990s, Vincent won three straight state titles and was named Mr. Basketball in the state of Wisconsin as a senior.
Since his playing days, Winston has become a fixture in the local basketball community, both on the high school and AAU scenes, most recently as coach at Brown Deer and for grassroots team Phenom University.
Winston isn’t the lone former southeastern Wisconsin standout prep point guard on staff. Ben Walker, an all-state player at Oak Creek in the 1990s, went on to have an all-conference career at Creighton. He was hired by Lundy as an assistant and helps spearhead the recruiting effort around Milwaukee.
“We’re trying to get seen a little more,” Walker said. “Trying to get out there a little more. Getting our beliefs out there, getting out there and being seen. That’s the most important thing: is getting people to see us so they know who we are in recruiting.”
Name any recruit within the state’s borders that Milwaukee might want to push for and Winston and Walker likely already has a foot in the door.
“I think if you ask around, he can go to any AAU program – which, this is rare – and everyone respects them,” Lundy said. “Go to any high school coach, they all respect them. A lot of times you get you hire guys, and they can go over here, but these guys don't like them. It limits you. Not Jose and Ben.”
Why recruiting Milwaukee matters
The Panthers have staked themselves out to first place in the Horizon League conference, putting on display a complete program turnaround in the coaching staff's first year and with 13 new players but none from Wisconsin on scholarship. Considering all of this, it's fair to ask, is recruiting the area really all that important?
"We think it is," Lundy said. "And here's why."
Lundy began to run through his philosophy on the subject matter.
“One, because there's enough good players."
There sure have been a bevy of good college players from Wisconsin in recent memory, but few have gone to Milwaukee.
Think there weren't members of the Panthers staff wishing they had Brookfield Central alum Andrew Rohde when he helped St. Thomas beat them earlier this year? Or Wright State's Alex Huibregtse, a Grafton graduate? Think they could have used Reed Timmer over the years? Or Paul Miller, Billy Wampler, Grant Basile, Levi Bradley, Carrington Love, Marcus Domask, Jackson Paveletzke, or another one the other many in-state recruits who excelled at a different mid-major school?
The Panthers aren't going to get everyone, nor is it likely that they suddenly become a giant on the recruiting trail. But they sure don’t intend on taking a backseat to any other program when it comes to going after the best players in the state.
“I would want to stress that we don't want just any Wisconsin kid,” Lundy said. “We want the good ones. We want the ones that can get us back to a Sweet Sixteen.”
Lundy’s second reason: the transfer portal.
“I had to go wherever I could go when I got here, obviously, and you see that with 13 new players,” Lundy said. “I thought it was important that we have that relationship with good players from here who may go somewhere else, decide it’s not the right fit and then they’re back in the portal.”
In the portal, the Panthers hope the connections of Winston and Walker to the area will help.
“It’s funny because Jose has come across most of those guys or their families in the grassroots,” Lundy said. “And you’d be amazed how many Ben has recruited, too. So we have lines out there a little more than you may think, even though none of it comes from me.”
Recruits sometimes get big eyes for schools farther away from home, as Winston sees it, but the Panthers want to be well-positioned in the event those players become available again.
“Sometimes what happens is, coming out of high school, you're not mature enough to be in the city,” Winston said. “Some kids have to get out of here to mature, but we want to be able to build those relationships before they get out of here just in case they want to come back.
“We'll already have that relationship built. You get what I'm saying? Sometimes you’ve got to go and grow, develop, do whatever you have to do to mature. Then some then those kids will see a winner and they want to come back and choose Milwaukee.”
Lundy’s third reason goes beyond the court.
“I take it very seriously that we are the city's university,” he said. “The 24,000 students that go here, a lot of them are from the city and the vast majority are from the state. We want to represent the city and we want to recruit the city and we want to be a reflection of what the city is.
“There's plenty of good players. They just haven't stayed.”
What it all looks like for Milwaukee
It’s easy to talk the talk, especially when it comes to recruiting. This staff certainly isn’t the first at Milwaukee to say that they want to keep local players home.
How they fare will ultimately be what matters.
So far, the Panthers have left some remnants behind to show where they’ve been on the recruiting trail.
In the last two weeks, they have offered a pair of the top 2024 prospects in the state, Kenosha Indian Trail’s Manasseh Stackhouse Jr. and Brookfield Central’s Jack Daugherty.
Stackhouse and Daugherty join the already-offered group of Simeon Murchison (Milwaukee Hamilton), Amari McCottry (St. Thomas More) Sekou Konneh (St. Thomas More), Aaron Womack III (Dominican) and Braylen Blue (Madison Memorial).
In all, UWM offered six in-state recruits during their summer camp on campus, a total that also included Demarion Burch of Milwaukee Hamilton, who recently committed to Bradley.
As the Panthers staff attempts to turn the perception of the program on the recruiting trail around, much of it boils down to one thing.
“Man, the truth is," Winston said, "if you don't win, nobody wants to be there.”
Don’t think recruits aren’t taking notice of the turnaround.
“I didn’t know all that much about them going in, honestly," said Daugherty, a junior. “I knew that they were really turning things around from previous years. It seems like right now they’re really in that top group of teams in the Horizon.
"You want to go somewhere where you can get wins. When you see a school that isn’t winning, it’s important to look at why not? Or if they are winning, you look at why they are. What’s causing them to win so much or not so much? The staff, players, other things it could be, and that helps you get a full picture.”
If the winning keeps coming then it may very well be that the players, especially the local ones, do, too.
“We’ve got a bunch of guys from all over proud to represent Milwaukee,” Lundy said. “It is cool to have that. It would also be very cool to have a bunch of kids that are from Milwaukee, they're playing with Milwaukee on the front of their jersey and they take pride in that.”
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Post by PantherU on Jan 31, 2023 15:36:25 GMT -6
Anyone want to go see Thomas More host Dominican tonight? Amari McCottry (St. Thomas More) Sekou Konneh (St. Thomas More), Aaron Womack III (Dominican) all playing at 7 pm.
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Post by PantherU on Jan 31, 2023 18:18:59 GMT -6
Anyone want to go see Thomas More host Dominican tonight? Amari McCottry (St. Thomas More) Sekou Konneh (St. Thomas More), Aaron Womack III (Dominican) all playing at 7 pm. Impromptu high school game party canceled due to complete lack of interest (weather).
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Post by FTA1982 on Feb 22, 2023 12:38:49 GMT -6
I'll be keeping my eye on this Nate Oats debacle at Alabama. Nick Pringle, former teammate of BJ and player for Coach Williams, signed with Bama this past year as the #2 JUCO player in the country. He hasn't gotten as much time this season and along with Oats'"possible" dismissal might put him in the portal. We have plenty of need for a versatile big.
Likely a longshot but who knows these days.
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Post by runninpanthers on Feb 26, 2023 0:16:54 GMT -6
I'll be keeping my eye on this Nate Oats debacle at Alabama. Nick Pringle, former teammate of BJ and player for Coach Williams, signed with Bama this past year as the #2 JUCO player in the country. He hasn't gotten as much time this season and along with Oats'"possible" dismissal might put him in the portal. We have plenty of need for a versatile big. Likely a longshot but who knows these days. Ur on the right track..
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Post by kman24 on Feb 27, 2023 12:25:31 GMT -6
6'7" Juco sophomore at Moberly Area CC. Averaging 12.9 points, 6.1 Def Reb, 4.9 Off Reb, 4.7 blocks, and 1.6 steals.
Other D1 offers from Jacksonville, Northwestern St, South Carolina State, Appalachian St, North Alabama, Radford, and UL Monroe
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Post by FTA1982 on Feb 27, 2023 13:29:51 GMT -6
6'7" Juco sophomore at Moberly Area CC. Averaging 12.9 points, 6.1 Def Reb, 4.9 Off Reb, 4.7 blocks, and 1.6 steals. Other D1 offers from Jacksonville, Northwestern St, South Carolina State, Appalachian St, North Alabama, Radford, and UL Monroe
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Post by Pounce Needs Pals on Mar 15, 2023 16:00:27 GMT -6
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Post by PantherU on Mar 19, 2023 14:32:32 GMT -6
LEARIC DAVIS COMMITS
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Post by PantherU on Mar 26, 2023 19:13:21 GMT -6
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Post by Pantherholic on Mar 30, 2023 7:44:07 GMT -6
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Post by FTA1982 on Apr 7, 2023 20:34:46 GMT -6
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