'I love where we are': Bart Lundy sees big things ahead for remade UW-Milwaukee basketball team

Bart Lundy hit the high school recruiting trail over the weekend with a clear mind and high hopes.

Entering Year 3 of his tenure as UW-Milwaukee men’s basketball coach, he and his staff have, in the span of just over two months, completely reshaped the Panthers’ roster.

Seven new players are poised to come aboard and join a talented group of returnees, with the sum total of the parts seeking to clinch an NCAA Tournament berth, which the team fell roughly 5 minutes short of this past season in an 83-76 loss to Oakland in the Horizon League tournament championship game.

“I love where we are and I love where we are in relation to the league, with all the turnover with players, the turnover with coaches,” Lundy said. “I think we are well-positioned with a veteran team and a veteran staff. The staff has been together for three years. We’ve got corporate knowledge with our players. We've added really good pieces; four of the guys that we’ve added have someone on our staff who's coached that player (in AAU or elsewhere).

“Then you have the character piece. I go down the list of the guys that we have retained and added – guys who are really good workers, really good teammates. Who knows? We may even get rid of the villain bad-guy rep that we have.”

Lundy’s last tongue-in-cheek comment is in reference to the, shall we say disagreement, between UWM and UW-Green Bay in the leadup to the teams’ Horizon League tournament quarterfinal matchup.

Perhaps that spice will continue with the Phoenix now being led by the recently hired Doug Gottlieb.

A mix of transfers and high school signees bolster UWM's depth

But Lundy’s focus is squarely on his group, which was finalized with the signing last week of Louisiana point guard Themus Fulks. He and freshman signee TJ Robinson, along with Queens transfer AJ McKee will give the Panthers talent and depth at a crucial spot that they had been lacking the previous two seasons.

“I wish he had more than a year (of eligibility) but we’ve got TJ coming in as well,” Lundy said. “So, we’ve  got legitimate, pretty high-level point guards. That really helps. TJ can kind of feel his way, learn college basketball, and we're not going through freshman year (growing pains) too much with him. And then we get a guy that's been there and done that.

“He’s played a whole lot of college basketball, had a lot of success in college basketball. So, it's huge for our team.”

Scoring shouldn’t be an issue even with BJ Freeman having transferred to Arizona State, with Erik Pratt, Kentrell Pullian and Faizon Fields – who ranked second, third and fourth on the team in that category last season – returning and McKee (18.8 points per game at Queens as a senior) now in the fold.

There is size and rebounding, with the 6-foot-10, 220-pound Fields having established himself as a bona fide player in the post in the second half of the season, 6-8, 225-pound Darius Duffy, 6-8 and 220-pound signees Jamichael Stillwell from Butler County (Kansas) Community College and Danilo Jovanovich, a former Whitnall High School player who transferred in from Louisville.

Sophomore Simeon Murchison (6-9, 220), who played at Milwaukee Hamilton, and 6-9 incoming freshman MJ Stackhouse of Kenosha Indian Trail will provide depth.

Athleticism on the wings is in supply as well with the 6-5 Pratt, 6-7 Learic Davis and 6-7 John Lovelace Jr., a transfer from Youngstown State and Brown Deer alum.

“It's the first time that I look at the roster and I see that we are completely stable, completely balanced with everything,” Lundy said. “I love the grit and the defensive ability that we have that we may or may not have had in the past. We're long and athletic. We got away from some of our defensive principles last year out of necessity, but we can get back to a lot of that and get back to the kind of the basketball that people became accustomed to two years ago – a little faster, a little more pressure. I think we're really built for that.

“And then, I love I our character. I love where it's gone. We had struggles at times this past year with character issues, and behind the scenes there were some work-ethic issues. All that's gone. We’ve got guys who love to be in the gym, some real grinders.

“Really, for the first time since I arrived here, I'm just energized and pumped up to coach this team because of who our personnel is.”

UWM hungry to show it belongs in NCAA Tournament after just missing out last season

Last year UWM was picked in preseason to finish second in the Horizon League and thanks in part to injuries, inconsistency and said behavioral issues it tied for fifth in the regular-season standings at 12-8.

But the Panthers did rally to win eight of their nine final games to earn a spot in the Horizon tournament championship game and played Oakland tight throughout.

The Golden Grizzlies then went on to become an NCAA Tournament darling, knocking off third-seeded Kentucky as a No. 14 seed in the first round.

No doubt, Oakland will be loaded for bear again in the Horizon League. But Lundy & Co. aren’t going to be running from the likely high expectations that will also accompany them into 2024-25.

“I think we're where we want to be, and it's where we wanted to be last year,” Lundy said. “The stark difference to me in being with our guys day to day, I personally felt like in (2022-23) when we won 22 games, we came out last season and the guys who returned stopped working and kind of just expected it to happen.

“The feeling I have from our team now is that we were 5 minutes away from the NCAA Tournament, and they are unsatisfied and they are hungry. Last year, I didn't feel like we were really hungry. We said we were hungry, but our work and our actions didn't show that we were hungry.

“This spring, I’m seeing the hungry team and I think the guys that we have coming in are really hungry as well.”

The Panthers have about five weeks until they convene on campus to begin summer workouts.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Panthers coach Bart Lundy excited about his remade roster