UWM Panthers Fall to Drake 75-61

The UW-Milwaukee Panthers dropped their seventh game of the season Thursday night at the UWM Panther Arena, after losing to the Drake Bulldogs 75-61.

After a three-game skid, the Panthers find themselves desperate to get back into the winning column, and are looking to find any sort of momentum, especially on the offensive end, after beginning the 2018-19 season (2-7).

In a game dominated by Drake, Milwaukee jumped out to a quick start, leading the game by eight in the first two minutes of the first-half. This was the only time the Panthers offense seemed to be in sync, as the team struggled to find any sort of offensive spark or rhythm for the rest of the game. The Bulldogs finished the first half with a deflating 17-4 run, to take a 38-22 lead heading into the break.

“Disappointing tonight, I thought we started out with a great amount of energy,” UWM Head Coach Pat Baldwin said.

Lack of production on the offensive end was the story for the Panthers again, as they struggled mightily from the floor, shooting just 34 percent and 4-23 from three.

 “I think the bottom-line is we gave up some open threes towards the middle part of the first half that kind of opened them up a little bit and gave them some confidence and some threes that we wanted to take away,” Baldwin said. “We didn’t close out well enough, and I think that started their run, it might have been a 14 to 2 run that did us in, and we just couldn’t recover after that.”

The Panthers ran into a red-hot Drake team. The Bulldogs now (6-1) this season, have won five-straight games and are off to their best start since the 2013-14 season. The consistent shooting performance from the Drake Bulldogs throughout the game was too much for the Panthers to handle. The Bulldogs ended the game shooting 43.9 percent, while also adding 10 triples, compared to Milwaukee’s total of 4 made threes.

Despite the tough (2-7) start to the season, Coach Baldwin is proud of the effort he has seen from the guys.

“I enjoy being around our guys, and they do have fight, and I believe in every single one of our guys we have, and we put out there on the floor,” Baldwin said. “Those guys that were out on the floor especially in the second half, I really believed they had a lot of fight in them. They cared about the team and what we’re trying to do and trying to get it back into the game.  I think our guys have fight and I believe that, and they haven’t showed me anything different. If you think about our past games, we’ve been down, and our guys have continued to fight, it’s just a process.”

Early foul trouble led to the Panthers leading scorer on the bench for much of the first half. In the second half, Darius Roy led the way in scoring again for the Panthers, finishing with a game-high 19 points. UWM Freshman, Jamar Madge was rewarded with extended minutes after his tremendous effort the previous game when the team was in Ireland, Baldwin said.

In the second half, Baldwin encouraged the guys to keep attacking and getting downhill. DeAndre Abram and Darius Roy were able to get the Panthers to the line consistently in the second half, finishing the game 21-24 from the charity stripe. However, in the end this wasn’t enough, as the Panthers trailed by double-digits throughout much of the game.

“Certainly, without a question this is a disappointing loss because we were ready for this game. But Drake ultimately took control, and finished off the first half well, and kind of cruised and coasted and did all the things they needed to do to in order to keep us at bay,” Baldwin said. “We’ve got to regroup from this and we got to get better, and we got a lot of work to do.”

The Panthers will return home to the UWM Panther Arena on Sunday 12/16, where they will face off against Wisconsin Lutheran. With just a few non-conference games remaining before the Panthers open Horizon League play up at home against Green Bay on 12/29, UWM is looking to turn their season around before it’s too late.