3-0 in conference and an early leader of the Horizon League pack.
Your Milwaukee Panthers held serve at home against the Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons Monday night at Panther Arena. In fact, with Milwaukee leading for an astounding 91% of the game and leading by as many as 35 points, it was a bona fide rout of a critical conference game.
Tonight's 77-55 cakewalk victory over the Mastodons was a much-needed jolt for the fan base and a team that has shown flashes of brilliance this season but not yet put together a stretch of winning that would suggest they might be headed for March Madness.
After tonight's convincing win, people's opinion of the Panthers has risen. How high it can rise will only be limited by how many more wins like that we can rack up and how many conference wins we can stack up to be the #1 or #2 seed heading into the Horizon League Tourney this March.
Aaron Franklin led all scorers with 13 beastly points in the paint (and a big triple) and 13 rebounds to boot. Amar Aguillard added 12 and Sekou Konneh and Chandler Jackson added 10 and 11, respectively. And Isaiah Dorceus tallied 7 assists continuing a trend of righting our "point guard" position problem that had shown up early in the season as a potential giant liability.
And the Panther defense was staunch, holding the Mastodons to just 7-32 from 3pt (22%)- something that will win a lot of meaningful games.
Milwaukee (7-6, 3-0) has literally zero downtime before their next match up tomorrow night in Madison at the Kohl Center vs. our big, bad, "big bro": Buckey Badger.
The Badgers have some deficiencies not seen in recent more successful seasons which may open up a lane for a Panther upset but the contest tomorrow is all but certain to be a Badger victory and one final non-conference tune-up before Milwaukee plunges headlong into a Horizon League season that they were picked to win or favored to contest in 3 of the past 4 seasons that Bart Lundy has been at the helm.
And after just one day of a break between this Fort Wayne victory and the UW game, we play at Wright State on New Year's Day afternoon. So, this is a busy week for Milwaukee- and the Wright State game looms large regardless of how we fare in the buy game against the P5 school in Madison tomorrow night.
If the wins start rolling in, the injuries to Lovelace and Hubbard may be easier to bear, and Stevie Elam may be back in the lineup before we know it.
go panthers.
press on. 🏆🏀
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