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Post by PantherU on Oct 24, 2011 16:29:16 GMT -6
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Post by shooting the J on Oct 25, 2011 6:04:10 GMT -6
Milwaukee was lucky in conference play last year, not good. Stat genius Ken Pomroy ranked Milwaukee the 4th luckiest team in the nation last season!
They finished in the bottom 4 in the conference in most major statistical categories. They went 5-8 in non-conference play.
They were a middle of the pack caliber team last year, and lost Anthony Hill. They still won't defend, and now don't have a post scorer to revolve their offense around. They'll play middle of the conference level basketball, and I doubt luck equates that into 13-5 again.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 25, 2011 12:22:27 GMT -6
Ken Pom also said Wisconsin was 34 places better than Butler, who depantsed the Badgers in the NCAA Tournament.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 25, 2011 12:24:29 GMT -6
I think that Ken Pomeroy's numbers are great and he puts a great deal of thought into them, but his ratings system is still flawed - he has not yet conquered it.
I would say we were lucky to win two games last year - the Valpo home game and YSU away game.
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Post by shooting the J on Oct 25, 2011 16:09:51 GMT -6
Pomroys ratings were for the regular season. Butler played at a completely different level in the tourney. Plus, 1 game means little, YSU beat Butler last year, UIC beat Illinois. Butler got handled by the 9th place Big East team. Your operating the significance of 1the game. Milwaukee went 5-8 in NC for a reason. They weren't very good.
When predicting future success, it more accurate to use past statistical performance than past record.
If Milwaukee is going to be great, which major statistical categories will they be good in?
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Post by GBPhoenix1 on Oct 25, 2011 19:00:44 GMT -6
I don't think uwm is going to win the conference this year. I do think they were a surprising winner last year and I didn't think they were that good. However, they were the winner and that can not be taken away from them. Since that is the case I don't have too much of an issue with Jimmy predicting they will win again. I think James Haarsma is going to be a very good HL player and help ease the loss of Anthony Hill.
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Post by GoPanthers33 on Oct 27, 2011 7:19:43 GMT -6
I think we have as good a shot as anyone in the top 4 to win this year.
If we don't win I am very confident we will be in the top 3.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 27, 2011 14:08:48 GMT -6
I don't think uwm is going to win the conference this year. I do think they were a surprising winner last year and I didn't think they were that good. However, they were the winner and that can not be taken away from them. Since that is the case I don't have too much of an issue with Jimmy predicting they will win again. I think James Haarsma is going to be a very good HL player and help ease the loss of Anthony Hill. Being around the program and on this board now, I can say that the loss at the Resch Center (which should have been by 20 but was magically only 5 or 6) was the first part of a turning point for our players. To put it short, the team had a big gut-check session just a week and a half later after losing its last conference game at Valpo in another embarrassment. You can see the change in the schedule. They looked within themselves, as most teams who are challenged do, and found the strength to make themselves a better team. The team in early January at the Resch was a far cry from the one that won nine straight games to finish the conference. That's why they won. And the fact that the conference is really good, so teams at the top ate each other. But Milwaukee was 4-2 against the other three teams at the top - 2-0 vs Butler, 1-1 vs CSU and Valpo. They won the really hard games.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 27, 2011 14:15:44 GMT -6
I think we have as good a shot as anyone in the top 4 to win this year. If we don't win I am very confident we will be in the top 3. I think, and this is part of where I came up with the rankings, that any of the top four teams - Butler, Detroit, Cleveland State or Milwaukee - could win the conference. I think if Alec Brown were a junior or senior and had another 20-30 pounds of muscle on his frame, the Phoenix would have a better shot, but he's not going to be dominant - this season at least - so there will be some growing pains. As with the whole team. I'd expect if you'd ask Brian Wardle, and he's be brutally honest, he'd tell you that the Phoenix are shooting to really hit their stride next season or the year afterward. Brian was interviewed in Milwaukee on Bill Michaels' radio show the other day. He said that he thinks Alec Brown needs to get stronger, and pointed out that no player has been in the program more than one year - everyone, even the two seniors, is in their second season or first. It doesn't matter what kind of talent you have on the roster or on the bench, there are going to be major growing pains. My guess is GB will struggle in the non-conference season against some tough opponents, beat who they're supposed to beat in most games, then get better in the conference season as it goes along. I also fully expect to lose at the Resch Center if our guys don't have their heads screwed on right by the time the game comes around.
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Post by shooting the J on Oct 27, 2011 17:31:25 GMT -6
No arguments there, none of us are predicting anything ridiculous like GB in 1st.
That is amazing isn't it? Even though he did mis-speak, Heuer is in his 3rd year.
And yet this doesn't effect Milwaukee at all? Do you realize 9 of the 12 scholarship players you will put on the floor will be in their 1st or 2nd year at Milwaukee?
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Post by PantherU on Oct 28, 2011 13:37:53 GMT -6
No arguments there, none of us are predicting anything ridiculous like GB in 1st. That is amazing isn't it? Even though he did mis-speak, Heuer is in his 3rd year. And yet this doesn't effect Milwaukee at all? Do you realize 9 of the 12 scholarship players you will put on the floor will be in their 1st or 2nd year at Milwaukee? It will affect us - and the number is four (Ryan Haggerty is on scholarship this year). But the thing that will really affect us now is Tony Meier, who looks to be out until early December with a calf injury - I had heard he tore something in his calf and they're being cautious by saying it will be 6 weeks from now even though most of these injuries take about 4-5 weeks to heal (and he's been hurt for over a week now). That's going to hurt us, but hopefully we'll get him back by Wisconsin and Marquette in December. It will be interesting to see what we get out of him right away when he comes back. By January he should be fine, but I wonder what the recovery will do to his game for the first couple weeks as he assimilates himself back into the team. We play the Chicago schools early on, so I don't think the injury will affect our conference record. But it's pretty crappy to not have him in the non-conference. A couple notes from last night's intrasquad scrimmage: You guys should be fuming that you lost out on J.J. Panoske, since he dropped his verbal to GB. He's a much stronger version of Alec Brown with a sweet three-point stroke. He needs some more confidence on the offensive end but he's ready to go. Now. He dropped 7 blocks in the scrimmage. The strength coach told us Kyle Kelm added 25 pounds of solid muscle. He had two dunks to finish last night that were absolute NBA rim-rocker type jams. The only other player in the Horizon recently I've seen throw down like that is Eli Holman. He missed a few jump shots but you can see they were good form, he was just off. One thing I worried about last year, and was a big reason we lost so many games, was our lack of defense on the perimeter outside of Kaylon Williams and Ryan Allen. Both are great defenders, Allen is better, but they were alone last year. Ja'Rob McCallum came back stronger and showed a lot more toughness on the defensive end, but the real winner here may be Paris Gulley, who was a straight-up lock down defender and just killed it. On the offensive end, I think Evan Richard may be our starting point guard by the end of the year. I'm glad he's white and from Cuba City in the southwest part of the state, because if he were from the city he never would have made it down to our level. At Panther Madness he wowed us with a reverse 360 jam and an east bay funk dunk, but yesterday he scored almost every time he touched the ball and could have had a lot more if he wasn't focused on getting it down low. Shaq Boga is raw but he is a beast. Kaylon Williams is probably going to be suspended early on because of the DUI, so Shaq is likely to get the keys right away and he absolutely can run the show. He was a dynamite scorer. He's raw, but the game experience is going to set him straight pretty fast once he starts seeing players outside of our own team. Big Mete (I love that nickname) Demetrius Harris came in a lot more polished on the offensive end than I thought. He's as strong as Anthony Hill but not quite as good of a scorer. However, he plays higher than Hill does - he's a better rebounder and hot damn the boy can slam. All in all, I think this team lived and died by the three a lot last year. That isn't the case this year, at least not last night. This is a strong, physical team and it's got a lot of quickness and ball handling in Gulley and Shaq Boga that we didn't have last year. Mark me down as someone who can't wait for the first GB-MKE game. The Brown/Panoske/Kelm block party is going to be awesome.... That gives me an awesome idea. How about this - we get a t-shirt design, on the top in small letters it says "BROWN VS. PANOSKE" and then in big letters in the middle it says "BLOCK PARTY" really huge. We get it in green shirts with red lettering and gold shirts with black lettering. Get them to people before the games, so we've got a ton of t-shirts in the arena. Just an idea. But I was psyched to see how good Panoske and Kelm were. Kelm was decent last year as a freshman, but I can't believe the transformation he's undergone this off-season. Just...wow.
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Post by GBPhoenix1 on Oct 28, 2011 14:59:39 GMT -6
Jimmy I like the t-shirt idea. It seems like a fun way to get the fans a little more in to the rivalry.
Just a quick comment on JJ Panoske. No doubt losing that verbal hurts GB. However, I wouldn't go off the deep end just yet. Alec Brown has actually averaged 10/5/2 in D1 college hoops. JJ has blocked 7 shots in a scrimmage in which he already knows the opponents offense before they run it. Big big difference there. I don't have to go too far back in the archives to know that Michael Tyler, Burleigh Porte or Mitchell Carter where guys who uwm fans thought looked the part of legit bigman but in actual games never were able to contribute. I am not saying JJ is the same, just don't get so excited that you are comparing him to Alec Brown just yet.
As for GB, I think our fans could be just as excited about guys like Turner and Cerroni as uwm is about Kelm and Richard. Turner isn't as big but was a way better 1st year player than Kelm. Cerroni stunk last year but coming off a big injury he might improve. By all accounts he was as good before his injury as Richard. Its reasonable to assume our guys have improved as well. Plus Cougill has played and contributed in the Big 10 as a freshman, that is a lot more than Big Mete (awesome nickname btw) can say.
Just my 2 cents.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 28, 2011 16:53:09 GMT -6
All very valid points.
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hoops
Sophomore
Posts: 208
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Post by hoops on Oct 28, 2011 20:39:49 GMT -6
No arguments there, none of us are predicting anything ridiculous like GB in 1st. That is amazing isn't it? Even though he did mis-speak, Heuer is in his 3rd year. And yet this doesn't effect Milwaukee at all? Do you realize 9 of the 12 scholarship players you will put on the floor will be in their 1st or 2nd year at Milwaukee? It will affect us - and the number is four (Ryan Haggerty is on scholarship this year). But the thing that will really affect us now is Tony Meier, who looks to be out until early December with a calf injury - I had heard he tore something in his calf and they're being cautious by saying it will be 6 weeks from now even though most of these injuries take about 4-5 weeks to heal (and he's been hurt for over a week now). That's going to hurt us, but hopefully we'll get him back by Wisconsin and Marquette in December. It will be interesting to see what we get out of him right away when he comes back. By January he should be fine, but I wonder what the recovery will do to his game for the first couple weeks as he assimilates himself back into the team. We play the Chicago schools early on, so I don't think the injury will affect our conference record. But it's pretty crappy to not have him in the non-conference. A couple notes from last night's intrasquad scrimmage: You guys should be fuming that you lost out on J.J. Panoske, since he dropped his verbal to GB. He's a much stronger version of Alec Brown with a sweet three-point stroke. He needs some more confidence on the offensive end but he's ready to go. Now. He dropped 7 blocks in the scrimmage. The strength coach told us Kyle Kelm added 25 pounds of solid muscle. He had two dunks to finish last night that were absolute NBA rim-rocker type jams. The only other player in the Horizon recently I've seen throw down like that is Eli Holman. He missed a few jump shots but you can see they were good form, he was just off. One thing I worried about last year, and was a big reason we lost so many games, was our lack of defense on the perimeter outside of Kaylon Williams and Ryan Allen. Both are great defenders, Allen is better, but they were alone last year. Ja'Rob McCallum came back stronger and showed a lot more toughness on the defensive end, but the real winner here may be Paris Gulley, who was a straight-up lock down defender and just killed it. On the offensive end, I think Evan Richard may be our starting point guard by the end of the year. I'm glad he's white and from Cuba City in the southwest part of the state, because if he were from the city he never would have made it down to our level. At Panther Madness he wowed us with a reverse 360 jam and an east bay funk dunk, but yesterday he scored almost every time he touched the ball and could have had a lot more if he wasn't focused on getting it down low. Shaq Boga is raw but he is a beast. Kaylon Williams is probably going to be suspended early on because of the DUI, so Shaq is likely to get the keys right away and he absolutely can run the show. He was a dynamite scorer. He's raw, but the game experience is going to set him straight pretty fast once he starts seeing players outside of our own team. Big Mete (I love that nickname) Demetrius Harris came in a lot more polished on the offensive end than I thought. He's as strong as Anthony Hill but not quite as good of a scorer. However, he plays higher than Hill does - he's a better rebounder and hot damn the boy can slam. All in all, I think this team lived and died by the three a lot last year. That isn't the case this year, at least not last night. This is a strong, physical team and it's got a lot of quickness and ball handling in Gulley and Shaq Boga that we didn't have last year. Mark me down as someone who can't wait for the first GB-MKE game. The Brown/Panoske/Kelm block party is going to be awesome.... That gives me an awesome idea. How about this - we get a t-shirt design, on the top in small letters it says "BROWN VS. PANOSKE" and then in big letters in the middle it says "BLOCK PARTY" really huge. We get it in green shirts with red lettering and gold shirts with black lettering. Get them to people before the games, so we've got a ton of t-shirts in the arena. Just an idea. But I was psyched to see how good Panoske and Kelm were. Kelm was decent last year as a freshman, but I can't believe the transformation he's undergone this off-season. Just...wow.
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Post by phearthephoenix on Nov 1, 2011 15:59:34 GMT -6
This is how the 'Nix really get in to the HL schedule (they play the Chicago schools at home the first couple days of December)
Thu, Dec 29.......@butler Sat, Dec 31.......@valparaiso Sat, Jan 07........@milwaukee Thu, Jan 12........vs Detroit
I see maybe 1 win there. Thats a pretty tough way to really get into the meat of the conference season. I agree GB will be right around the middle, probably 5, 6, 7.
Jimmy I like your shirt idea!
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