• Spying the Enemy - Davidson Wildcats



    Game #3 - Davidson College Wildcats
    November 17th, 2012 - 7 p.m.
    Klotsche Center

    Our third game of the season brings the Milwaukee Panthers back home, as they take on Bob McKillop's Davidson Wildcats at the Klotsche Center. The difference between South Carolina and Davidson couldn't be more clear. Where Frank Martin is a new face with a heavily altered roster to reflect his new reign, Davidson is left largely intact from last year when they lost by seven to Louisville in their first game in the NCAA Tournament. This is, clearly, a team that is looking for a deep NCAA Tournament run. They're upperclassmen heavy (eight scholarship upperclassmen), they know how to win and they're hungry after losing a game they could have won in the Big Dance.

    2011-12 Record: 25-8, 16-2 SoCon
    Statsheet RPI: 71
    KenPom: 67

    Lead Returnees (Place on team in 2011-12)
    PPG: De'Mon Brooks, 15.7 ppg (1st)
    RPG: De'Mon Brooks, 6.2 rpg (1st)
    APG: Nik Cochran, 3.6 apg (1st)

    Biggest Loss - This is the part that should scare Panther fans the most. Their biggest loss, at least from a numbers point of view, is Will Reigel, a senior last year who averaged 6.75 last season. What was that? Oh, right, I should have specified that he averaged 6.75 minutes last season for the Wildcats, scoring 21 points all season and averaging 1.5 rebounds per game (pretty decent considering the time he was on the floor). The fact of the matter is that Davidson is a team built for this year, with three senior starters returning and their star, De'Mon Brooks, only a junior.

    New faces - Jordan Barham, a 6'4'' shooting guard with a big scoring ability out of Chicago, looks to be the best. But the truth is that Davidson is probably looking at an eight man rotation that will be untouched from the previous season. Injuries will need to happen for Barham or his fellow freshmen to get playing time, so don't expect to see much of them unless this game is a blowout in either way.

    Style of play - This is the typical Bob McKillop team - they're damn good at everything. The first thing you notice about Davidson is their size. In their eight-man rotation, their guards are 6'4'', 6'4'', 6'3'', 6'7'', and 6'6''. Their forwards are 6'10'', 6'7'', and 6'7''. The good news is that we've got a ton of size to match up with these guys - Kelm, Panoske, Haarsma, Wolf and Haggerty are all big enough to take on their forwards. Their guards, however, are much larger. The Panthers will be lining up Evan Richard, Paris Gulley, Bobo Niang, and Jordan Aaron against them, and we're giving up size no matter who is matched up on who in the 1 or 2 spots. The three is where we gain it back, because JJ Panoske and Demetrius Harris look to be playing a lot of time at the 3 spot, and 6'10'' and 6'7'' with speed will create quite the match-up problem that the Panthers need to exploit offensively.

    Bottom Line - While this is the first real big game in the Klotsche Center since the move back home and the place should be rocking, it is still going to be a serious uphill battle for Milwaukee to beat a Davidson team that has more size than the typical good low-major and also harbors legitimate Sweet 16 aspirations coming into 2012-13. Milwaukee luckily has the size to match, but who knows if the Panthers will be deep enough this early on to really run down the Wildcats with the new-look speedy offense. Milwaukee will be leaning heavily on several players with sparse-to-none Division I experience: Jordan Aaron, Bobo Niang, JJ Panoske, Demetrius Harris, and Austin Arians are all newcomers to Division I or didn't play much last year (Harris).

    Davidson looks like the most "finished" product that I've seen coming into a season in recent memory. They return everyone who averaged more than seven minutes per game, they lose something like two points per game off a team that averaged 78 a season ago. I would say that you can take solace in the fact that Davidson had a sweetheart schedule for most of those 25 victories, but the truth is they beat both Richmond and Kansas and had close call losses to Vanderbilt and UMass.

    This will, in my eyes, easily be the toughest game on the home schedule, at least in the non-conference. We better make sure the Klotsche Center is packed so those Wildcats can't hear themselves think, because that will make life a lot easier for the Black and Gold.