Milwaukee engineers second-half comeback against men’s basketball

Posted by Kevin Gunnerson

The University of Chicago Men’s Basketball (6-5) closed out the non-conference schedule in heartbreaking fashion on Saturday afternoon at the Ratner Athletic Center, losing a close contest to the Milwaukee School of Engineering Raiders (6-6). The game was a tale of two halves that saw MSOE erase a 14 point first-half deficit to secure the two point victory, 64-62.

The Maroons looked good in the first twenty minutes of play, employing a balanced attack and moving the ball well. Milwaukee pressured the offense with a full-court press early in the first-half which was handled well. Each time down the court the Maroons let their offense develop, passed the ball and hit on 58% of their field goals.

Milwaukee was only able to convert on 32% of their field goals in the first half and committed 9 turnovers. The defense of the Raiders worked well down low, but their ball movement on offense was lacking, prompting head coach Brian Miller to pull his entire starting roster from the court at one point.

At the end of the first half the Maroons held a comfortable 37-23 lead.

Milwaukee came out hot to start the second half, going on a 10-2 run to cut the lead to 6 at the 16:41 mark. The Maroons seemed to slip into some of the bad habits that have dogged them early in the season by depending too much on the three-point shot, having prolonged scoring droughts and committing sloppy turnovers.

Chicago committed 10 turnovers to Milwaukee’s four in the second half, and for the game only hit on 4 of 16 shots from behind the arc. Even as the Raiders got into foul trouble late in the game, the Maroons still relied on the outside shot instead of pressing the basket and looking for the foul.

The last field goal for Chicago came on Marek Kowalewski’s layup with 3:42 remaining that knotted the score at 59-59. But down the stretch the Maroons were unable to convert any buckets except for hitting three of their final four fouls shots, suffering their first home loss on the season.

For the game, the Maroons’ leading scorer was John Kinsella who finished with 11 points, three assists and two rebounds.  Milwaukee was led by Bennett Deacon and Austin Meier, who each scored 18 points. The Raiders out rebounded the Maroons 27-24.

Whether it was due to the big half-time lead lulling them into complacency in the second half, or the fact that Milwaukee just wanted the game more, the Maroons need to right the ship going into the start of conference play.

The Maroons open up the conference schedule on Saturday, January 9^th in St. Louis against Washington University (9-1).  The Bears are coming off back-to-back Division III National Championship seasons.  Chicago will be looking for their first road win of the ’09-’10 campaign.