PantherU wrote:There's a note I want to make that I've heard mentioned about Milwaukee in other places.
It's been brought up how Milwaukee hasn't won a game in the NCAA Tournament in 10 years, and has only one appearance since then. This is true.
One of the people I saw bring this point up mentioned that college basketball at mid-majors is cyclical; that almost no one is great every single year, and the ones that are have moved up to high-major conferences (Butler, Xavier) or exist on their own island (Gonzaga). This is also true.
A little background, because I want you all to know how Milwaukee was built up at pretty much the worst possible time.
Keep in mind that Milwaukee was the best team in the conference at the end of the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons not named Butler. They literally ran into the greatest mid-major of all time in the semifinals in 2010 and missed a three-pointer that would have tied it late, then Butler made their free throws and went on to absolutely trash Wright State in the title game on their way to finishing a couple inches from the NCAA Title. In 2011, Milwaukee won at Butler and destroyed them in Milwaukee, then Butler took the conference title game and went to the NCAA Title game again.
I say all this because, as I said, Butler in 2010 and 2011 was the greatest mid-major basketball team of all time. Of. All. Time. So what do you think of Milwaukee if they had NCAA Tournaments in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2014? What if they had a tourney victory in 2011 and had Big Dance W's in 2005 (Sweet 16), 2006 and 2011?
That team's probably a shoo-in for the MVC. So are we really going to dismiss Milwaukee because they ran into the Best Mid-Major of All Time? 'Sorry, you'd be getting into the MVC, but you hit the upside of your cycle right when you were facing Brad Stevens, Gordon Hayward, Matt Howard and Shelvin Mack. Valpo's for sure in because they hit the top of their cycle after 2011, when Butler fell off and then left.'
Don't get me wrong, I think Valpo is the #10 team for the MVC. I just think it's real easy to dismiss Milwaukee without looking at history more closely.
Until 1999, Milwaukee was among the worst programs in DI. Period.
From 1999 until 2005 Milwaukee was fortunate to have Bo Ryan and Bruce Pearl in succession. Even Ryan in his 2 seasons only managed to get them to 3 over .500 for his two years-a testament to just how horrendous the program was in the nineties. Pearl was able to take a good situation and lead the program to 3 NCAA bids before leaving in 2005. They were probably very fortunate to avoid any sort of NCAA problems stemming from the Pearl era.
Rob Jeter, a Bo Ryan product, took Pearl's program to the tournament in his first year, and then proceeded to finish higher than 4th just twice over the next 10 years, and just 4 times higher than 5th. While he did have a second NCAA appearance, it was as a fifth place finisher.
As for the two seasons you cite, Milwaukee finished 4th in 2010, behind Wright St and Green Bay as well. So they ran into more than just The Greatest Mid-Major of All-Time (which is openly debatable.) I'll give you 2011 since they not only tied Butler for the league title, they also beat them. But they won fewer overall games and didn't even make the tourney because of a schedule that wasn't good enough to get them in...that's a Valley no-no, unless you're the Redbirds, but they'll never get it.
They've had losing Horizon records in 3 of the last 5 years.
Look, its OK to try and sell Milwaukee, they're not at the top of my list, but if we're being honest about history, the program has largely been a trainwreck. Now, they haven't been as terrible as they were in their early DI days, but they have had more teams closer to the bottom of DI than they have RPI 100 teams since Bo Ryan and Bruce Pearl have been out of the picture.
Their performance profile beyond that is the very definition of meh.
