Get ready for a ton of early season road tests (and a light early home schedule), Panther fans. The team secured five games against P5 powerhouse programs including preseason favorite Florida and perennial contender Vanderbilt.
The road games are most if not all "buy games" which bring in a payday of between $50k-$100k each for the program. The buy game money represents much-needed revenue in the era of NIL and the oftentimes-revolving door of the transfer portal. We need to build for the future and maintaining a roster and staff costs money.
Many Panther fans had hoped that the final schedule would include 21 conference games, but Coach Lundy confirmed that the Horizon League will schedule 20 conference games per team.
The challenging non-con slate almost guarantees that this team will wind up with more than 10 losses- unless this group is a special and legendary one. Regardless, the non-con will provide invaluable experience that will carry over into the conference games, and the Horizon League is wide open again this season.
Milwaukee figures to battle it out for the top seed in the Horizon League Tourney, which they aim to win and punch a ticket to March Madness for the first time since 2014. That's the goal, that's the "north star" for the program and we may be very close with this group- chemistry and teamwork are already more evident than possibly any other Lundy-coached Panther team to date.
The home games against St. Thomas and UIC (welcome back, Flames) will be great opportunities to get the Arena rocking again in preparation for another competitive Horizon League slate of home games downtown.
One additional non-con game remains to be scheduled which will likely be a DII or DIII opponent at Panther Arena or the KC.
Nov. 2 -- at USC
Nov. 4 -- at Santa Clara
Nov. 11 -- at Indiana State
Nov. 13 -- at TCU
Nov. 21 -- vs. St. Thomas
Nov. 24 -- at Florida
Nov. 29 -- at Oregon State
Dec. 8 -- at South Dakota State
Dec. 12 -- vs. UIC
Dec. 15 -- at Little Rock
Dec. 21 -- at Vanderbilt
press on. 🏆🏀
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