St. Thomas 75, UWM 71: Another slow start burns the Panthers in third straight loss

The early-season blues are proving difficult to shake for UW-Milwaukee. 

Although the Panthers were presented with an opportunity to get back on track Wednesday on a trip to the Twin Cities, the night went the same way as many have this year: frustrating. 

The Panthers fell into a big deficit early and a frenetic late rally fell short in a 75-71 loss to St. Thomas, a small Summit League team from St. Paul. The loss dropped their record to 3-6 this year and just 1-6 against Division I opponents.

Box score:St. Thomas 75, UW-Milwaukee 71

 It was the third loss in a row for Milwaukee, which didn’t lose more than two consecutive games last season during a breakout campaign in head coach Bart Lundy’s first year. The team that, on the shoulders of last year’s resurgence, was picked to finish second in the Horizon League in 2023-24 has yet to show itself with any consistency. 

"We’ve got some confidence issues and guys maybe putting pressure on themselves, and their approach isn’t where it needs to be," Lundy said. "As a staff, we over-compensated with our game plan today and then we adjusted. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for you. You got to keep plugging away. We’re a good team, we just got to find that team."

The story of Wednesday’s loss was similar to others this year. Milwaukee struggled to find a rhythm offensively, couldn’t connect from deep and missed the presence of top scorer BJ Freeman, who was out for the second straight game with an injury. 

And, above all, another slow start buried the Panthers, who had as many turnovers (seven) as made field goals in the first half as the Tommies opened up a 38-22 lead. 

Not only have the Panthers fallen behind early far too often, but those deficits have proven insurmountable; in their six losses, the Panthers haven’t once held a lead in the second half. 

Milwaukee has been outscored by 91 points across those losses – an average of 15.2 per game – before then outplaying its opponents by 14 points total in the final period.

"I don’t know what it is – whether they’re taking pressure off themselves and they’re just playing at that point," Lundy said. "Maybe the other team lets down a little bit. But our intensity seems to amp up a little bit. When you don’t see the ball go through the hoop, the defensive woes that we’ve had get exacerbated. It’s just compounding itself and snowballs on us." 

Erik Pratt’s 14 points led three double-digit scorers for the Panthers, with Elijah Jamison (13 points) and Angelo Stuart (11 points) joining him. 

Raheem Anthony scored 23 points to lead the Tommies, who shot worse (40.7%) than the Panthers (43.1%) but made up for it by sinking 24 of 30 free throws and only committing seven turnovers.

St. Thomas’ lead ballooned as high 20 on a Kendall Blue driving layup with 13:36 to play. Milwaukee would cut it to nine on a Pratt pull-up jumper as part of a 6-0 run just over four minutes later and had the ball with a chance to draw within two possessions but missed a pair of shots. 

The Panthers would eventually chip their way back within four on consecutive Darius Duffy layups with just under two minutes left. 

Milwaukee at that point had finally found a groove with its defensive pressure, holding St. Thomas to just three points and without a field goal for more than six minutes. 

After Blue missed a three with 1:06 to go, Markeith Browning had a look at a layup to cut the lead to two but couldn’t connect. Then the Tommies corralled an offensive rebound off a missed three with 21 seconds to go and Drake Dobbs sank a pair of free throws to push the lead to six and put the game on ice.

"Two or three possessions where if we come up with a defensive rebound, we might win the game," Lundy said. "But, again, it’s the deficit that we put ourselves in."

It was the type of furious second-half effort the Panthers have often shown under Lundy. 

It just hasn’t shown itself in the first half nearly often enough – and that keeps biting them.