The UW-Milwaukee Panthers are eager to turn the page on a frustrating, injury-plagued 2025-26 men’s basketball season.
They’ll do so with a reshaped roster – as is the norm for a mid-major in the NIL era – that combines a couple of veterans, transfers from Marquette, Oklahoma, Saint Joseph and Syracuse, and a handful of young players whom coach Bart Lundy hopes might actually buck the trend and stick around to develop. The group has as great a Wisconsin flavor as in any of Lundy’s first four seasons.
The early going, in particular, won’t be easy, with a nonconference schedule heavy on road games, including two against top-25 teams.
And a smaller program that’s always had trouble attracting attention in a major-league city will be overshadowed by an unusual player, with the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series leapfrogging Marquette, Wisconsin and even the Green Bay Packers in sports fans’ consciousness at the start of the college basketball season.
If the Panthers can take inspiration from a small-market success story in town, Lundy is happy to join the bandwagon.
“Trying to build teams in this era of the portal and NIL, I just think the Brewers are just the best thing going,” Lundy said. “In all sports. What they’re doing, how they’re doing it, how they’re managed, their front office, I just think they’re awesome.”
Lundy, senior forward Danilo Jovanovich and Marquette transfer Tre Norman met the media Oct. 20 at the UWM Panther Arena.
Here are four takeaways from the session.
Panthers have a chip on their shoulders, individually and collectively
The 2025-26 team was picked to win the Horizon League but was hit with a brutal string of injuries to top players that began even before the first regular-season game. They ended up 12-20 with an 8-12 league record.
“We did go through the adversity,” Lundy said. “Wright State won the league. They were picked seventh last year or eighth in the preseason. … They’re picked first this year. So take it with a grain of salt.
“[Last season] was a good challenge and we’re going to reap some of those benefits this year, not only with the development of some of those guys, but that little chip is definitely there.”
Jovanovich, who attended Whitnall High School and arrived from Louisville in 2024-25, played with a bum shoulder much of last season before opting for surgery after 17 games. He averaged 12.4 points and 6.1 rebounds despite his limitations.
The 6-foot-8 senior forward put his name in the transfer portal, found “it kind of really sucks” and opted to return to UWM with a vengeance.
“I know people [underestimated] me and say I’m injury prone or whatever it is,” he said. “I just want to prove to everybody that I can have a great year and then that we can go to the tournament as a team and have a great year for the city and for this program.”
Norman is looking to show people – including some just up the street – that he’s more of a player than the one who averaged 2.0 points and 1.4 rebounds in 8.8 minutes per game at Marquette.
“I want to … be able to look myself in a mirror and say I did everything I could,” Norman said of what he’d consider a successful season.
“I have a chip on my shoulder, just in a sense of the past three years, I wasn’t able to show what I really am, who I really am, and that left a sour taste in my mouth.”
‘Brutal’ road schedule awaits before busy January in Milwaukee
The Panthers are set to host six games in a little more than three weeks in January. By that time, though, they will have played 15 times with 11 of those away from the downtown Arena and on-campus Klotsche Center.
“We are still kind of in that range where we have trouble getting games,” Lundy said. “And especially home games.”
Road foes include Southern California, which starts the season ranked No. 22, in the regular-season opener Nov. 2; Santa Clara, which went to the NCAA Tournament last season, two days later; Texas Christian, which received votes in both polls, Nov. 13; top-ranked Florida on Nov. 24; Pac-10 returnee Oregon State, Nov. 29; and Vanderbilt, another 2026 tournament team, Dec. 21.
“It’s brutal,” Lundy conceded. “But I think we have a team that’s built to do it, and we’ll go and compete.
“I’ve kind of watched [frequent Horizon League frontrunner] Oakland over these few years and watch what they’ve done in the preseason. I think that’s helped them later on. They’ve taken some lumps in the preseason, but it’s helped to build their team to be ready in March. So that was kind of the thing we looked at as well.”
John Lovelace Jr. could be the comeback story of the year
After suffering a compound leg fracture a year ago in practice after leading Milwaukee in its exhibition victory, John Lovelace Jr. has one more chance to prove himself as a Panther.
The 6-foot-8 guard from Brown Deer has a little way to go in his recovery, Lundy said, but he has been cleared and is progressing well.
“We’re really watching his load,” Lundy said. “So he doesn’t go all the time in the scrimmages. He doesn’t do shoot-around right now. We’re just trying to take it easy.
“But every time that he’s in the game for us, things change and he’s still very, very impactful. I don’t think we’ll see the real Johnny till about January.”
Panthers roster is heavy on Wisconsin players, finally, by design
With Jovanovich (Whitnall), 6-9 forward Simeon Murchison (Milwaukee Hamilton) and hopefully Lovelace Jr. (Brown Deer) back, the addition of 6-1 freshman guard Amare Hereford (Beloit Memorial) and the transfer arrival of 6-5 guard Aaron Womack III (Dominican) and 6-1 guard Jake Hanson (Wauwatosa West), Lundy has as much local flavor as he has had on a Milwaukee team.
Part of that is evolution. As a coach new to the area five years ago, he didn’t have many contacts, but Lundy now has had time to become entrenched in the community. And associate head coach Ben Walker (Oak Creek), associate coach Jose Winston (Milwaukee Vincent) and second-year assistant Julian Swartz (Waukesha South) all have deep roots in the Milwaukee area.
Realistically, part of Lundy’s job is selling his team to build a fan base, and having familiar, talented players helps his pitch.
“I knew that we would build it to where it became a Wisconsin team, Milwaukee team,” Lundy said. “And as people have started to trust what we’re doing here in the product, how we develop guys, all you have to do is look at where our guys go after, whether they go pro or whether they go on to play somewhere else. We’re developing our players. The coaches in the state really respect that.
“So this has been an intentional journey. But then you add the portal and everything else into it, and I think having guys from here, they’re more likely to keep them here.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UWM Panthers rebuild with a chip on the shoulder and some familiar players