They’re back. Or so the Milwaukee Panthers will have you believe. UWM returns four of five starters and nearly every role player from a team that went into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament last year. Gone, however, is the team’s top scorer and most dangerous outside threat, not to mention Horizon League player of the year, Ed McCants. Perhaps more importantly, head coach Bruce Pearl went off to the SEC and the promising coach wasteland called Tennessee. In to replace Pearl is first time head coach Rob Jeter. Jeter is a product of the Wisconsin system and was most recently an assistant at Wisconsin. He was also an assistant at UWM during the Bo Ryan years.
Jeter knows the expectations are high and feels his squad hasn’t let past success go to their heads. “It’s very flattering to receive the pre-season accolades and have the expectations. But those accolades will mean nothing if you don’t go out and do it during the season,” said Jeter. “They have put forth a tremendous effort in the off-season. If they can attack the season the same way they attacked the hill and the rest of their pre-season conditioning, this can be a very special season,” added Jeter.
The hill that Jeter refers to is where the Panthers players run every pre-season. However, with the success that Milwaukee has had both in the league and on the national scene the Panthers will have to overcome a hill every night as they will have the bulls-eye on them this season.
Jeter inherits a very talented group of players whose list of accomplishments are known throughout the country and expected to grow significantly this season. Senior forward Joah Tucker has been tabbed the conference’s pre-season player of the year. Senior forward Adrian Tigert has been named to the pre-season second team and so too has senior guard Boo Davis. The team’s top playmaker, senior guard Chris Hill, rounds out the four returnees from last season’s squad.
Tucker showed what he’s made of during the NCAA tournament last season, with most people remembering his 32 point effort in Milwaukee’s loss to Illinois in the Sweet 16. Tucker is the Panthers leading returning scorer at 16.2 points per contest and snags nearly six rebounds per contest. He is very versatile and can even step out and hit a three, he made 20 last season. To top it off, he was second on the team in steals, free-throw percentage and assists.
Adrian Tigert has turned into a force in the middle during his time at UWM. Tigert is the league’s top returning rebounder, grabbing nearly seven per contest while chipping in just over nine points. Tigert also shot better than 57% from the floor last season.
Davis was second on the club in three-pointers made last season, hitting 56 threes on 35% shooting from beyond the arc. Davis averaged better than ten points a contest and led the club with an 83% clip from the free-throw line.
Hill was the Panthers top assist man last season dishing out better than three a contest for the second best passing team in the conference. Hill, like most all the Panthers, can also shoot the outside shot very well, hitting better than 37% last season.
Highly rated junior college transfer Tyrone Young will be expected to compete for the starting job in the backcourt. Young can play the two or three position and has the athleticism and muscle to score in bunches. The 6’4’ 200 pounder was rated among the top ten junior college players by some recruiting services and should help the allay the loss of McCants scoring abilities for the Panthers.
Senior Mark Pancratz averaged nearly 13 minutes a contest last season and is a gritty back-performer for the Panthers. The lone freshman eligible for the Panthers this season is 6’3” guard Kaylan Anderson. Originally from Canada the lanky guard has solid athleticism and will eventually be able to play in several spots for UWM.
In the frontcourt, the Panthers added junior college forward Kevin Massiah. Massiah shot better than 62% from the floor whole scoring 15.5 points a contest last season at Schoolcraft Community College. Massiah originally started at Western Kentucky where, as a freshman, he appeared in 23 games getting nearly 6 minutes a contest and averaging one point and less than a rebound per contest. Injuries plagued Massiah during his time at WKU, but he is healthy now for the Panthers.
Returning to the frontcourt are key role players Derrick Ford and Jason McCoy. At 6’10” 240 pounds Ford is a big load to handle in the Horizon League. Last season he started 6 contests and averaged just over ten minutes a contest. He did, however, lead the team in blocked shots. The 6’9” McCoy averaged just over 11 minutes per contest, chipping in three points and two rebounds per game.
The talent is there for the Panthers to, once again, claim the Horizon League crown, but a few questions remain. How bad will the team miss McCants? He was a tremendous leader and could change the tide of a game for the Panthers with his shooting ability. While UWM can still hit the outside they don’t appear to have an assassin from the outside like McCants.
The bigger questions come in the form of coaching. In watching the Horizon League for almost a decade now, I can’t remember another team that so embodied and seemingly fed off their head coach as much as UWM did with Pearl. Is this UWM squad like Butler from a few years back when they could just insert anyone into the coaching position and win the league? This team thrived off Pearl and it will be up to Jeter to get the same energy and emotion out of these players that Pearl did if he expects to get the same lofty results.
--article reprinted with permission of the author
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