Men’s Basketball Scoreboard
Detroit 58, Milwaukee 57
Green Bay 53, Wright State 48
The 27th game of the Horizon League men’s basketball season to be within a single possession brought about a four-way tie for third place in the conference standings, while the 28th occurrence kept six of the teams bunched within two games on Friday night.
At Calihan Hall, Detroit overcame a seven-point deficit with under two minutes to play, stunning Milwaukee, 58-57.
The win vaulted Detroit (14-12, 8-6 Horizon) into a four-way tie for third place in the Horizon League, joining Milwaukee (15-11, 8-6 Horizon), Butler and Youngstown State. For most of the game, the Titans seemed listless, finally coming to life in the final two minutes.
The comeback started with under two minutes to play. With the score 53-46 Milwaukee, Eli Holman poked a ball loose at midcourt and Ray McCallum converted on the other end to trim the margin to five. Pressure defense caused a UWM turnover and Holman eventually got a putback to go on his second attempt for a 53-50 game.
Milwaukee then tried to inbound under its own basket, but it went off Paris Gulley's fingertips for a turnover – the Panthers’ 25th of the evening. With Detroit holding the ball under its own basket, Gulley fouled Jason Calliste on the ensuing possession, and the junior calmly hit the first to tie the game and gave Detroit its first lead of the second half with a second swish.
Kaylon Williams took the ball to inside the three-point arc and got off a shot, but Holman was there to corral it. When a jump ball was awarded to Detroit, 1.5 seconds remained and the Titans had the ball underneath the Panther bucket. Chase Simon threw a baseball pass high in the air that Holman again snared out of the air as the final horn sounded giving the Titans their seventh win in their last nine games.
It was a win that came despite the Titans never really finding a rhythm offensively. The TItans did not crack the scoreboard until the 16:17 mark and it was a turnover-filled 2-2 game at the first media break. UWM scored eight straight during one stretch then the Titans countered with a 12-2 run of their own to regain the lead briefly but the Panthers held the five-point lead at intermission.
The halftime stats confirmed an opening 20 minutes that neither team will want to remember. The teams combined for 28 turnovers and Milwaukee was the beneficiary of Detroit's 36 percent shooting to take a 27-22 lead at the break.
The second half started just as the first one did with neither team scoring until more than three minutes had melted off the clock. Tony Meier's three kickstarted the scoring as UWM built its largest lead to 11 with seven minutes gone.
Although the Detroit offense still struggled to get into gear, UDM kept the game in range with defense holding the Panthers without a field goal for the next 5:55.
Meier would once again hit a triple for UWM to push the margin back to 10 with 7:15 to go before Gulley’s jumper with 2:54 left seemed to give the Pantehrs a comfortable margin. From there, Detroit outscored UWM 15-4 in the final minutes to complete the wild comeback.
McCallum led all scorers with 18 points while Holman added eight points and 11 rebounds for the Titans. Calliste had a career-high-tying five steals to go along with 12 points. Doug Anderson had 12 points and five rebounds for Detroit.
Meier led the Panthers with 17 points.
In Dayton, Green Bay (10-13, 6-7 Horizon) jumped up the League standings at Wright State’s (11-15, 6-8 Horizon) expense, 53-48.
Green Bay notched its first road win of the year in a manner similar to its 57-56 win at the Resch Center against Wright State, coming back late to frustrate the Raiders.
Alec Brown had 14 points and 10 rebounds as the Phoenix swept the season series to move into seventh place in the League standings, 1.5 games behind the four-way tie for third.
There were 14 lead changes and seven ties in the game, with the Raiders ahead 24-23 at halftime.
After Vance Hall’s second free throw gave Wright State a 44-43 lead, a layup by Keifer Sykes pushed the Phoenix ahead for good with 4:05 remaining. Brown added a layup and Green Bay went 6-of-6 from the free-throw line in the final 58 seconds.
With three blocks, Brown broke his own single-season record of 67 and now has 70 in his sophomore year, extending the Green Bay career record to 137.
Sykes finished with 13 points to compliment Brown, who led all scorers. The Phoenix limited Julius Mays, the leading scorer in Horizon League play entering the night to just six points. In his absence, Johann Mpondo and Reggie Arceneaux scored 12 points apiece for Wright State.
