Bealeagured UWM’s season ends in Horizon League tournament loss

Reality caught up with the Milwaukee Panthers in a big, big way.

Hobbled by injuries all year, matched up against a hot team with a deep lineup and unable to make shots while the game was still in reach, the Panthers fell to Detroit Mercy, 84-63, March 4 in a Horizon League men’s basketball tournament first-round matchup at Calihan Hall in Detroit.

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Like that, a season that began with conference championship aspirations ended with a 12-20 record, 8-13 against Horizon opponents.

Box score: Detroit Mercy 84, UW-Milwaukee 63

“We took our lumps, but through adversity and through hard things you have to grow and get better,” said coach Bart Lundy, who endured his first losing season in four since he landed at UW-Milwaukee.

“This is tough to take, but I don’t know how many groups could have sustained the lumps that we did and kept it together. … I thought if we could get this one we’d have had a chance to win the whole thing.”

Big man Sekou Konneh, a redshirt freshman from St. Thomas More High School via DePaul, led the Panthers with 13 points and nine rebounds. Redshirt junior forward Chandler Jackson and freshman guard Josh Dixon each scored 12 points.

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Detroit Mercy, which advanced to a semifinal meeting against Robert Morris on March 8 in Indianapolis, won for the eighth time in 10 games. Three of those wins came against UWM. At 16-14, the Titans have the most victories they’ve had in a season since 2015-16.

UWM ran cold and couldn’t keep up with Detroit Mercy early

The Panthers went 8 for 29 (27.6%) in the first half, nearly 17 percentage points worse than their season average, on their way to a 38-24 deficit. They ended up 23 for 62 (37.1%), 5 for 22 (22.7%) from 3-point range.

“I thought they were a little more aggressive than we were,” Lundy said. “They were a little more physical. Their physicality made us rushed.

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“I thought we were getting good shots, we were getting paint touches and a little frustration set in because the shots weren’t going down. We were only down 14 at the half. Needed to come out and start the second half well, and we didn’t.”

Within nine minutes of the second half, the Titans had built their lead to 24. They finished the night shooting 30 for 56 (53.6%).

Size and depth were big factors

Detroit Mercy put five players in double figures, led by guard TJ Nadeau with 17 points and including 6-foot-8 forwards Legend Geeter and London Maiden. The Titans had eight score among 10 who played.

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Contrast that with Milwaukee, which only traveled with 10 and essentially played eight after losing five players to season-ending injuries throughout the year.

Four times in 2025-26 Milwaukee lost its leading scorer, first when John Lovelace Jr. suffered a compound leg fracture between the exhibition game and regular season opener, then when Seth Hubbard’s and Danilo Jovanovich’s seasons ended due to shoulder injuries and finally when Amar Augillard suffered a broken ankle in the regular season finale.

That left freshman guard Stevie Elam, a childhood cancer survivor with one kidney who missed seven games due to a foot injury, as the player with the highest scoring average (10.5 ppg) coming into the league tournament.

At the same time, Faizon Fields, one of two remaining seniors and the second-leading remaining rebounder (5.7 rpg), was still hampered by an ankle injury suffered Jan. 1 and aggravated in February. He missed 11 games.

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Elam finished with nine points on 3-for-13 shooting, 2-for-7 from 3-point range against Detroit, and Fields had three points and four rebounds in 18 minutes.

“They have bodies, and they have big, strong bodies, old guys, and we just didn’t have enough to match them physically,” Lundy said.

What might have been?

From Dec. 20 to Feb. 7, Milwaukee won just two of 13 games.

Five of those losses were decided by six points or fewer, giving the Panthers enough winnable games that they could have finished above .500. Even then, though, they would have been short-handed and left wondering what they could have accomplished with a full complement of seasoned players.

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While the record book will show the numbers, the losses in the lineup will linger in the players’ minds more than the number of losses on the court when they look back years from now.

“So many guys on that court have never, never been through this at this level,” Lundy said. “We hope that that group, that core group [that finished the season] can come back and use this experience and this adversity to grow.

“I’m not much for moral victories, but sometimes when bad things happen you grow. You grow more when we hit adversity. We need to grow. We need to get better and find a way to keep guys healthy.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Panthers men’s basketball season ends in Horizon tournament