By Greg Bates
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – Kamari McGee came to play Wednesday night.
The freshman on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay men’s basketball team scored a career-high 22 points, but he didn’t receive much support on the offensive end from his teammates.
With rival University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in town, Green Bay tied the game at 33-33, but then the offense went silent.
Milwaukee went on a 17-1 run and never looked back in a 63-49 Horizon League victory at the Resch Center.
“That was a game we could have gotten, and we should have gotten, honestly,” McGee said. “The way we fought back and fought as a team, if we would have continued that, it would have been our game, no question.”
Green Bay shot just 27.8% (15-for-54) from the field and scored its second-lowest point total of the season.
McGee was 6-for-15, which meant his teammates were 9-for-39.
Phoenix’s leading scorer on the season, Manny Ansong, finished with 10 points on 2-for-10 shooting.
“That’s the tough part about the season,” McGee said. “When it’s one guy going — I know shots aren’t falling for the rest of the guys, so that makes it tough. Teams realize that and then key in on that specific guy. Today was me, so they keyed in. It makes it tougher. I still have confidence in my teammates to knock down shots; the shots are going to fall regardless.”
Green Bay was a measly 4-for-22 on 3-point shots.
Milwaukee defenders played off the Phoenix shooters, almost darning them to heave up a 3.
“That’s probably how lots of teams are going to guard us with our inability to knock them down from deep,” Green Bay Head Coach Will Ryan said.
Due to injuries and COVID-19, only eight Phoenix players were available for the game.
“I almost feel like we have to, I joke about it, we may have to bubble wrap our guys so we don’t get injured,” Ryan said.
Offensively for the Phoenix, the night belonged to McGee, who’s started the last five games.
He averaged 6.1 points per game in the first eight games but has cranked to 15.5 points in the past six games.
“His game has grown leaps and bounds,” Ryan said. “The game has slowed down for him. Early in the year, freshman jitters, I don’t know what you want to call it, but he got sped up. He’s a speedy player, but he was probably trying to do too much. He’s extremely talented at getting into the paint. … We know he can score the ball at a good clip, but now it’s a matter of, OK, teams are zeroing in on him or spying on him, can he make the right reads to get the next guy a good shot. He’s gotten better in that area.”
Green Bay (2-12 overall, 1-4 Horizon) jumped out to a 6-4 lead, but Milwaukee went on a 13-4 run to go up 17-10.
Josh Thomas scored six points during the stretch.
Patrick Baldwin Jr. didn’t convert his first hoop until late in the first to give Milwaukee (5-9, 3-2) a 26-14 advantage.
McGee scored the next seven points for the Phoenix, but the Panthers went into their locker room with a 28-21 lead.
Green Bay shot 22.2% in the opening 20 minutes.
The Phoenix came out of the second half with their offense on a roll.
McGee fueled a 12-5 run with a steal and layup to tie the score at 33-33.
Milwaukee, which had 42 points in the paint and outscored Green Bay’s bench 20-0, answered in a big way.
It went on a 17-1 run as Green Bay’s offense couldn’t hit a shot and turned the ball over six times.
“We took our foot off the gas,” McGee said. “We clawed back into it, we got it to tie and then we took our foot off the gas. That’s something that has hurt us in a few games. We can’t take breaks, and we’ve got to click together. We’ve got to realize we’ve got to do it for the whole half, not little spurts.”
Down 50-34, the Phoenix hit its first field goal in 6 minutes, 46 seconds to start a seven-point spurt with 8:48 left in the game.
An alley-oop dunk by Japannah Kellogg III — who tallied his first career double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds — made it 50-41.
Again, Milwaukee pushed its lead back up to double digits by scoring eight of the next 10 points.
The Panthers were led by DeAndre Gholston with 16 points.
Baldwin Jr., a projected NBA Draft lottery pick, returned after missing the last three games due to injury.
He scored two points in 11 minutes and suffered an ankle injury in the second half.
His dad, Head Coach Pat Baldwin, said he was pleased to pick up the victory against a program he knows well.
“Road wins are hard to get, and getting one here is special,” he said. “Patrick was born here. I had my time (coaching) here for two years. Our defense was big tonight. We had some keys we wanted to go on from a defensive end, and our guys played it well from a defensive standpoint.”
Green Bay has now dropped its last seven games and hasn’t experienced a win in five weeks.
“It’s tough, but we’ve got to be strong mentally,” McGee said. “Everybody on the team loves the game, and nobody wants to lose. We should be getting hungrier because we don’t want to lose, and we’ve been on a losing streak. We’ve got to find that grit inside us. We cannot get down, because if we get down, it won’t get better. We’ve got to stay positive and keep clawing away every day. One step at a time.”