UWGB men's basketball drops two games at home without hobbled star Noah Reynolds, falls into third-place tie
GREEN BAY – The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay men’s basketball team picked a bad time for its first three-game losing streak of the season.
The success the Phoenix (17-12) has enjoyed under first-year coach Sundance Wicks has been remarkable coming off a dreadful 3-29 season, earning UWGB recent national attention and talk of the best one-year turnaround in NCAA Division I men’s history.
That hope, along with winning the Horizon League regular-season title, likely can be put to rest after the Phoenix’s 71-59 loss to Youngstown State on Sunday in front of 3,202 at the Kress Center.
UWGB made a strong and entertaining sales pitch for fans to come out and support it for two games this past weekend — it included a video that featured the coaching staff reenacting a scene from “Major League” — but it happened to lay a couple stinkers while playing without hobbled star Noah Reynolds.
The Phoenix at least was better against YSU than it was in a 26-point loss to Purdue Fort Wayne on Friday, but neither performance will inspire many to predict a long run through the league tournament next month.
Of course, when people doubt Wicks and company, they tend to respond.
UWGB dropped three of four games in December to fall to 5-7, then won seven of the next eight and 12 of 14 before this skid.
There always were going to be highs and lows in a five-month season for a team with a new coaching staff and almost an entirely new roster.
Wicks has embraced it from the start. The good and the bad.
“You are building a program,” Wicks said. “That’s the one thing I think you have to understand. When you are building a program, we are not even a year into our process yet. Failure is a necessary part of growth. I thought the valleys for us were more so early on in the season where we just didn’t have real connectivity. We were lacking some consistency. To me, that was the valley.
“I thought our guys have done a pretty good job outside of the (PFW) game of being competitive and connected. I challenged them today, and they came out with their hair on fire. They came out a lot more aggressive, a lot more intense. That’s what I want. I always want response. I want to see young men respond to the challenge.”
The Phoenix (12-6 Horizon) slipped into a third-place tie with Wright State in the 11-team conference after the loss to the Penguins, behind Oakland (14-5) and YSU (13-6) and one game ahead of Northern Kentucky (11-7).
The Golden Grizzlies have only one game remaining and can wrap up the regular-season championship with a win over a Detroit team that is 1-29.
But UWGB still can earn a top four seed and receive a first-round bye in the league tournament by going 1-1 in its final two games at Cleveland State and UW-Milwaukee. Both are 10-8 in conference play.
Wicks loves that his players are resilient. He has no concerns they are shaken by a losing streak or the pressure of where they are in the standings.
“I mean, you just deal with it as a grown man,” junior guard Clarence Cummings III said. “You always face obstacles in life. We just deal with it as a team and working hard every single day. We just come in optimistic. Ready to play, ready to practice.”
When will star Noah Reynolds return?
The big question now is if Reynolds will be ready to either practice, or play, any time soon.
Wicks couldn’t answer whether Reynolds would return before the end of the regular season or even during the tournament.
He leaves it up to the player to decide when they are ready and has said more than once in the past that a player must feel mentally prepared to play before anything else.
That might be this week. Next week. Next season.
Wicks was asked if Reynolds has the dreaded high ankle sprain, which would severely put in doubt his ability to return this season considering it often takes weeks to recover.
Wicks said it was classified as a “high-low” sprain but also pointed out he wasn’t sure what that means other than maybe it’s in the middle.
UWGB proved it could win without Reynolds when it beat YSU on the road a couple of weeks ago. But attempting to win without the potential league player of the year for a long stretch is a lot to ask any team.
The 6-foot-3 Reynolds is the vital piece to the offense, the man who makes everything work better.
It’s evident by his 19.7 points per game on a team that has plenty of players who can step up any given night. No other player is averaging double figures, which would be the first time since 2000-01 the Phoenix had only one player average 10 or more points in a season.
“It’s hard playing without your best player,” Cummings said. “He is 20 points a game, like consistent. It’s hard, but at the end of the day, we did it at Youngstown. We know we can. We are great basketball players. We just try to rise to the occasion.”
UWGB didn’t have much time to adjust without Reynolds after he was injured a day before the game Friday. The coaching staff will spend the first few days of this week figuring out what will help players get more movement without the creativity of Reynolds.
The team sees so many different defenses that no matter what new wrinkles might be installed, the players will still have adjustments to make during every game.
“We just need to take time to think about the game and then watch some film,” Cummings said. “Practice hard, be ready to go Wednesday (at Cleveland State).”
Wicks liked the sound of that plan for a team that must get back into the win column.
“Pretty simple, isn’t it?” he said. “Watch film. Practice hard. Be ready to go.”
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: UWGB men's basketball has first three-game losing streak of season
