After winning their first-round game against Purdue Fort Wayne last week at the Kress Center, the upstart Green Bay Phoenix men’s basketball team’s season came to a screeching halt Sunday afternoon in Indianapolis. The number 5 seeded Phoenix fell 96-76 to the seven seed Northern Kentucky in the second round of the Horizon League Tournament.

Green Bay was looking to make its first appearance in the conference tournament semifinals since 2020, but NKU had other ideas. 

After an ice cold start – NKU missed their first nine three point attempts of the game – the Norse turned blistering hot, knocking down 14 of their last 27 shots from deep. Overall, they shot 49% from the floor for the game, including 14-28 (50%) from behind the arc. 

“Obviously I’m disappointed,” Green Bay head coach Doug Gottlieb said after the game.  “I think we’re a better team than we played, but we knew that Northern Kentucky is a really talented team.”

The Phoenix – who struggled earlier in the season defensively but came into the game playing stellar on that side of the ball, ranking 4^th in the country in Hasalmetrics.com’s Defensive Momentum metric – could not find a way to slow down the Norse offense, particular their shooting from long distance.    

The Phoenix jumped out to an early 7-0 lead and led 25-22 with 4:33 left in the first half, but that would be their last lead of the game as NKU took a 36-30 lead into halftime and held a comfortable lead for most of the second half, outscoring GB by a score of 60-46 in the half.

Green Bay’s defensive efficiency rating for the game was a whopping 145.5, the 7^th highest in the program’s history during the KenPom era, which dates to 1998. 

“Some of that is that’s their strength.  Some of it is the weakness of our defense. Some of it is, thought we gave them a little bit of confidence with the rebounding and giving them extra opportunities.”

For its part, the Phoenix shot 50.9% from the floor but just 4-14 (28.6%) on three-pointers. 

GB was also crushed on the glass with NKU outrebounding the Phoenix 37-25, including 15 offensive rebounds which lead to 21 second-chance points.    

“You know, team hits ten more threes than you and gets 15 offensive rebounds and you turn it over more than them…there’s just there’s no math that allows you to compete unless you shoot 50 free throws and we couldn’t get there,” Gottlieb added. “So congrats to Northern Kentucky. They were the better team today, they whooped us pretty good.”

“But I do think that allows all of us to reflect on the year we’ve had.”

And despite the disappointing end to the season, it was overall an incredible bounce-back season for the program that no one outside of the Kress Center anticipated. 

After a disastrous season last year, Green Bay will finish with its second-highest ever KenPom Adjusted Offensive Efficiency at 112.7 points per 100 possessions and its best overall KenPom ranking since the 2019 season. 

The program’s 18 wins this season equaled the amount of the 2024 team coached by Sundance Wicks – the program had won just 16 total games in the three seasons of the Will Ryan era.  And the team advanced in the Horizon League Tournament for the first time since 2020. 

“What we’ve been able to accomplish with our guys, I just couldn’t be prouder of,” Gottlieb said.  “And you know, the unfortunate thing about tournament play is oftentimes your season gets lost in it.”

The Phoenix had swept the regular season series with NKU making Sunday’s season-ending blowout loss even more disappointing. 

However, the foundation has been laid and expectations will be considerably higher next season for a Phoenix program that came into this season with almost no expectations at all.

“For us to go from picked dead last by a wide margin and starting out the season 1-5, starting out the conference season losing at home to Robert Morris and then getting blown out by Wright State, to then bounce back and play as well as we played on the road, at home, and build really on our culture,” Gottlieb said.

“I haven’t had a ton of time to reflect, but I do think that if you use today as a snapshot of just how talented Northern Kentucky is and then you say, ‘well, we beat that team twice in the regular season.’ Boy, we must’ve had a hell of a regular season. So that’s what I’m going to rest on.”

Photo via Horizon League / Instagram