Your Milwaukee Panthers started out the conference season right with a clutch win over the Robert Morris Colonials.
With towering forwards in Josh Hill (6'11") and Nikolaos Chitikoudis (6'9") and a steel tower of a scoring machine in likely All-Horizon DeSean Goode (6'8", 26pts and 8reb), Robert Morris (7-4, 1-1) built up a comfortable 41-34 lead going into half after the Panther offense went silent for the final 5 minutes before break.
Milwaukee (4-5, 1-0) would bounce back in the next 20 minutes.
Five minutes into the second half the Panthers began to find an offensive rhythm and started getting key stops, offensive rebounds and free throw conversions to cut into RMU's 8-10 point lead. Milwaukee tied things up 52-all with 11:43 remaining and held onto a small lead down the final stretch until the Colonials tied it up 72-72 with just 9 seconds left.
The contest seemed destined for overtime. But it was not to be as Milwaukee had one last haymaker of a scoring play to unleash.
With the game winding down, Milwaukee's Seth Hubbard zeroed in on a difficult offensive rebound and with just the right angle of flick, tipped in the game winning bucket just milliseconds before the final buzzer sounded to put Milwaukee over the top 74-72.
Robert Morris almost succeeded in setting up an attempt to sneak out of town with a comeback victory in OT, but these Panthers were resilient and held on.
Isaiah Dorceus had an outstanding game with 10pts, 4ast and his most confident PG play of the season. (he also sank 3 huge triples). Aaron Franklin held down the fort in the paint scoring 12 points and collecting 6 rebounds. And Seth Hubbard led all Panther scorers with 21 points to go along with 5 rebounds.
We didn't play our best game, but we got just enough contributions and emerged with the victory.
Point guard play and ball movement in general looked much cleaner, we shot pretty good from the free throw line (71%), and most importantly (it was apparently stressed big time in the last week of practice)- the Milwaukee defense finally came alive (in the second half, at least) and began to be the limiting factor it needs to be if the Panthers are going to be a championship team.
The cliche always remains true: defense wins championships.
Next Sunday Milwaukee faces another non-con challenge as Indiana State comes to town presenting an opportunity to get back to .500 on the season.
go panthers.
tilt the floor. 🏆🏀
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