If you’re a Green Bay Phoenix fan, without question the biggest games of the regular season are always the clashes against the UW-Milwaukee Panthers. 

Those clashes have not been an enjoyable experience over the past couple of years, but the Phoenix faithful were treated to a thrilling 79-76 victory Monday night against their arch rivals at the Kress Center on the UW-Green Bay campus, ending a four game skid against the Panthers .

Here are a few takeaways from Monday night’s game:

Fast start

Green Bay head coach Doug Gottlieb put an emphasis on getting more scoring options on the floor to start games and not be so reliant on one or two guys.

For the past two games, it appears to have paid off.

Green Bay knocked down their first nine field goal attempts of the game Monday night, racing out to a 22-9 lead. 

It was the second game in row where Gottlieb used a starting lineup of Preston Ruedinger, CJ O’Hara, Justin Allen, Caden Wilkens, and Marcus Hall.   Ramel Bethea and Lebron Thomas had started the previous three games but have contributed off the bench in the victories against Purdue Fort Wayne and Milwaukee.

“We were starting more of a defensive group up until the Fort Wayne game and it would just basically be like, if Marcus would hit some shots early, we’d have a lead like Santa Barbara,” Gottlieb said after the game.  “This gives us five scorers. Got five guys, pick your poison.”

That starting five finished a whopping +24 in plus/minus in 21 minutes (32 possessions) during the 72-54 win at PFW on New Years Day and helped the Phoenix build an early lead Monday night against Milwaukee.  Allen in particular scored 13 points in the game’s first ten minutes en route to finishing with a game-high 21 points on 9 of 15 shooting.

“He’s a bucket,” Gottlieb said of Allen.  “It’s really hard to contain him. And because we’re starting Caden and Marcus, it gives him unbelievable space to operate.”

Lineups and combinations will likely continue to be matchup dependent but it’s a safe bet that the Phoenix will continue to trot out the same starting five that have brought early success and resulted in the team’s current two game winning streak.

“If you want to hug up, [Allen’s] going to go get a bucket in the lane, CJ’s going to go get a bucket in the lane,” Gottlieb added.  “If you’re going to help, we’re going to spray it and we’re going to get threes.”

“So it makes you look like a really, really good coach when you coach from ahead.”

Big lead evaporates; GB needs a comeback of its own

You could forgive Phoenix fans who were feeling a sense of “here we go again” watching Green Bay’s 21-point lead dwindle to the point where UWM actually took a five point lead with 7:54 left to play in the second half.

The Phoenix had squandered an 11-point lead with just over three minutes remaining in an 80-78 loss to Robert Morris on this same court last month and nearly coughed up a 9-point lead with 4:26 left against UC-Santa Barbara before hanging on for a three-point victory. 

Monday would be similar with the Panthers finishing the first half on an 11-4 run and some momentum heading into the locker room trailing 46-32.  They came out of the locker room and scored the first seven points of the half and outscored the Phoenix 27-9 in the first twelve minutes of the second half to take a four-point lead.

“We got a little sped up in the second half, played their pace,” Gottlieb said.  “I got into Justin about a couple quick shots. They’re not bad shots, but at that point we have to control tempo the way we want to play.”

“They play 100 possession games. They have the most field goals attempted in the country heading into the game. They play at a fast pace.”

Green Bay did eventually settle in and stop the bleeding – an alley-oop to Bethea cut the Milwaukee lead to two with 5:11 left to play and an O’Hara layup on the next possession tied the game at 65.  After a defensive stop, an Allen layup on the next possession gave GB a two point lead at 67-65. 

A clutch Ruedinger three-pointer – the Phoenix only made three 3s on nine attempts the whole game – gave Green Bay a three-point lead with 3:23 to go. 

After two UWM free throws, an unbelievable effort sequence with an offensive rebound tap out by Bethea culminated with a soaring O’Hara tip-in to restore GB’s three point advantage with just over two minutes to go. 

“Everything was good and then went to a little bit of hell in a hand basket, but we found a way and good teams find a way.”

UWM not at full strength

It should be noted that the Panthers, the preseason favorite to win the Horizon League for the second season in a row, were missing several projected starters due to injury.

Seth Hubbard, the team’s leading scorer at 16.6 points per game, is out for the season with a shoulder injury.  John Lovelace, a 6’8” guard and key contributor last season, suffered a non-contact injury on October 30 and will miss the entire season.  Stevie Elam is averaging 8.4 points per game off the bench but has missed the past few weeks with a foot injury. 

But perhaps most crucial for Monday night, the Panthers’ best interior presence and shot blocker, Faizon Fields, missed the game due to an injury suffered in the team’s previous game – a 76-70 loss at Wright State.

Without Fields, Green Bay dominated around the basket outscoring the Panthers 44-24 in the paint and shot 72.7% from the floor in the first half, finishing 62.2% for the game.  In addition to efficient shooting, the Phoenix only ended up minus 3 in rebound margin against one of the best rebounding teams in the country. 

“If we have [Fields] tonight, he makes a huge difference. He covers up so much,” UWM coach Bart Lundy said after the game via The Roar. 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team shoot 72%…44 points in the paint, they just drove us and shot layups.  Gotta be tougher.  As a staff we’ll have to adjust to what we’re doing, gotta keep the ball out of the paint.  But people are just walking in there.” 

“That first half was an embarrassment to our program.”

Green Bay gets the last laugh in round one

A lot has been made of some of the back-and-forth chatter that helps make this rivalry the best in the Horizon League and one of the best in all of mid-major basketball.

After Green Bay’s loss to Michigan Tech last season, UWM assistant Jake Williams, a former junior college head coach, posted a tweet saying “all my former JUCO teams would dogwalk GB.” 

Despite the tweet being deleted, that comment has not been forgotten and perhaps provided a little extra motivation for the Phoenix for this meeting.

“I don’t kick other people when they’re down and one of their assistants chose to,” Gottlieb said during an appearance on the Wisconsin Sports Radio Network last week.  “All of our guys saw it.  But yeah, we remember it.”

“If one of my assistants ever tweets that out, they won’t be here the next day, it’s really that simple.  But we remember it.”

For his part, Lundy also seemed to stir the pot a little with some postgame comments following his team’s loss to Wright State on New Years Day, commenting on how Green Bay was promoting the upcoming matchup with their archrivals. 

“Green Bay has built this up, even today they’re playing at Fort Wayne and its ‘we play Fort Wayne slash Milwaukee’s coming’, so they want our group….Careful what you ask for,” Lundy said back on January 1, via The Roar. 

It’s fair to say the rivalry had been all Milwaukee in recent memory up until Monday night’s Phoenix victory.  Despite that, this matchup still contains some of that spiciness from the meetings during the Sundance Wicks era where there was genuine vitriol. 

After the game, Gottlieb was more complementary of the Panthers. 

“I know it’s really easy to hate Bart and Milwaukee if you’re a Green Bay guy because of a couple years ago,” he said after the game.  “I thought they showed incredible resolve.”

“We were kicking their ass and they fought back and hit shots and played out of their mind well.  And we know it’s going to be a you-know-what storm when we go down there to Milwaukee.”

“That’s what college basketball’s supposed to be about. That’s what Green Bay is supposed to be about.”

With the victory, Green Bay improves to 8-8 overall for the season and 3-2 in Horizon League play. Milwaukee falls to 7-9 overall and 3-2 in the Horizon.

Round two will take place on Sunday, February 15^th at UWM Panther Arena in Milwaukee.