The UW-Milwaukee Panthers fall to the Illinois-Chicago Flames (14-15), 80-69, on Tuesday night inside UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena in the First Round of the Horizon League Tournament.
The Milwaukee Panthers finish the season with a 10-22 record. Six straight losing seasons in the books now for the Panthers.
UWM started the year ranked No. 121 in the KenPom rankings and were projected to finish anywhere from second place to fourth place in the Horizon League depending on which projections you were looking at. The Panthers finished the year in ninth place, a first round loss in the conference tournament and are ranked No. 336 in KenPom’s rankings as I write this.
Tonight was a fitting end to a disastrous season. The Panthers were mostly uncompetitive, outside of a roughly 5-minute stretch in the second half, just like they had been all season.
Pat Baldwin Sr. just concluded his fifth season as head coach of the program and the Panthers have a 57-92 (.383) record in his tenure and a 34-59 (.366) Horizon League regular season record and UWM has gone 3-4 (.429) in the Horizon League Tournament, with two of those wins coming in last seasons tournament.
Tonight there were “Fire Baldwin” chants in the small crowd of 450 people in attendance.
Joey St. Pierre finished with a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds tonight.
Jordan Lathon also recorded a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds.
It’s probably a good thing that the season is over because they embarrassed themselves as a program every time they took the court this season.
There needs to be a lot of changes. This program has grown increasingly irrelevant since Amanda Braun made the brutal decision to fire Rob Jeter.
Fans, boosters, alumni and students have finally had enough. If there wasn’t enough evidence of that, just look at the attendance for Tuesday night’s Horizon League Tournament (postseason!) game …. 450!
Pat Baldwin Sr. is a good recruiter, but I’m not sold on him as a coach outside of that.
The real pressing issue with what’s wrong at UWM is the leadership. One of the people that needs to be relieved of their duties is Athletic Director Amanda Braun.
It’s going to be a very long and interesting offseason with UWM and this offseason they need to make the correct decisions if they want to have an ounce of relevance going forward.
Nick Obot 