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Pack the bags for Indianapolis.
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay men’s basketball team and its turnaround under second-year coach Doug Gottlieb continued with a 64-56 win over Purdue Fort Wayne in the first round of the Horizon League tournament March 3 at the Kress Center.
UWGB junior forward Marcus Hall led the way with a game-high 19 points, while senior guard Justin Allen had 13 and senior point guard Preston Ruedinger had 11 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds.
The Phoenix must wait a day to find out its first opponent. Depending on how results shake out, it will either play in the second round March 8 at the Corteva Coliseum in Indianapolis or receive a bye and go to the semifinal round March 9.
The Phoenix shot 46.8% overall (22-for-47) and just 27.8% from 3 (5-for-18), but it held the Mastodons to 40.4% overall (23-for-57) and 20.8% from 3 (5-for-24).
PFW guard Corey Hadnot II, who was the league’s scoring champion this season with 20.6 points per game, was held to 15 points on 6-for-16 shooting.
All of it was enough for Gottlieb to again proclaim that while his team’s defense might not be the best in the nation, it is the top one in the 11-team Horizon.
Even better, it’s the first tournament victory for UWGB since 2020. It will attempt to win two league tournament games for the first time since going to the NCAA Tournament in 2016.
The Phoenix improved to 18-14, the exact record it had in former coach Sundance Wicks’ one and only season with the program in 2023-24 before he was hired at the University of Wyoming.
Wicks took over a team that had gone 3-29 one season earlier and helped the Phoenix make an impressive turnaround.
Although Gottlieb had to clean up his own mess after leading UWGB to a 4-28 record last season, the team’s improvement is just as noticeable.
It even found a way to win again come tournament time.
“I’m just incredibly proud of our group,” Gottlieb said. “If you look statistically, the weakness to our defense is defending the 3-point shot. This is two games in a row [after holding Youngstown State to 6-for-21 from long range Feb. 28], and Fort Wayne, I thought we defended the 3 exceptionally well.
“I’d credit them. They are not a particularly good rebounding team, but they rebounded the ball today. They are not really a zone team, but they gave us a couple different zone looks which slowed us down a little bit. … But who cares? We won the game. We are going to Indianapolis.”
UWGB continued its mastery over PFW this season, winning all three meetings.
Although it didn’t jump out to a 15-0 lead like it did in the first game Jan. 1 or 13-0 in the rematch Feb. 12, it still built a quick 10-2 advantage in the first 4 minutes, 13 seconds and never relinquished it.
In 120 minutes against PFW this season, UWGB trailed for only 58 seconds.
The Phoenix led 34-22 at halftime and was up as many as 15 with 1:10 remaining in the opening half.
But the Mastodons did not go away.
They scored 13 of the first 18 points of the second half to cut the deficit to 39-35 with 13:15 left.
They held UWGB without a field goal for more than 4 minutes during the sequence after freshman forward Caden Wilkins missed a 3-point attempt and Allen missed two straight from beyond the arc along with a layup.
It got even tighter after Hadnot hit a jumper with 9:03 remaining to get PFW to within 4 points.
But Allen responded with a layup, sophomore guard C.J. O’Hara made a steal that led to another Allen layup, and suddenly things went from uh-oh back to just fine with a 50-43 lead entering a media timeout with 7:46 left.
Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
The Mastodons again roared back, at one point scoring 9 straight points to get to within 54-52 with 2:04 remaining.
Ruedinger took over from there for UWGB, hitting four free throws and a layup to get the Phoenix back up 60-54 with just 37 ticks on the clock.
A short time later, UWGB players and their fans were celebrating.
“I think we are getting better,” Gottlieb said. “I legitimately think we are getting better.”
But this good? Did anybody really believe the team would go from one of the worst in the entire country to such a respectable group in 12 months?
“Yeah, I think so,” Hall said. “Our first year [in 2024] we were very confident, especially in the postseason. I kind of saw what it took to be good in this league, and I feel like for us, I think Coach would agree, this year we put a huge emphasis on defense.
“In this league, that’s important. I feel like there are no teams on offense that are that much better than you that you just can’t guard them. You can guard everyone, and everyone can guard you. I feel like defense was a huge emphasis, and seeing that grow in the preseason and even throughout the season, it just kept growing our confidence.”
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: UWGB men's basketball marches on in Horizon League tournament