MILWAUKEE - Jordan Johnson scored a career-high 25 points and the Milwaukee men's basketball team held on for a thrilling 83-80 victory over the University of Detroit Saturday afternoon at UWM Panther Arena.
 
The Panthers (14-6, 5-2 Horizon League) overcame a slow first half against the Titans (9-9, 3-4 Horizon League) to claim the win, scoring 52 points in the second half. The final 39 seconds of the contest took over 15 minutes of real time to play out, with the Panthers going 4-for-4 from the line, closing it out with an emphatic dunk by J.R. Lyle in the final seconds.
 
"Well, I am glad there wasn't another three seconds left on the clock," Milwaukee head coach Rob Jeter said. "It's a tough game and you have two teams who are really battling and trying to get themselves in position in this league. You are going to have games like that. I thought Detroit came in and did a really nice job of keeping us off-balance and disrupting our rhythm and our timing."
 
Johnson made 7-of-10 field goals and was 8-of-9 from the line, finishing with those 25 points while adding six assists and four rebounds despite first-half foul trouble.
 
"That first half got a little scary when Jordy went down with two (fouls) and I think as a result, we might have scored one bucket in about 10 minutes," Jeter said. "He's our leader, our floor general and for the first time this year we had to battle a little adversity with him off the court. There were a lot of things happening tonight and we just found a way."
 
Matt Tiby had 14 points and eight rebounds, with J.J. Panoske and Akeem Springs both adding 12. Lyle finished with 10 points in just 11 minutes off the bench, going 4-for-4 from the free throw line.
 
Chris Jenkins led Detroit with 20 points, while Paris Bass finished with 18 and a team-high eight rebounds.
 
The Panthers overcame a rough first half, making just one field goal over the final 10-plus minutes in trailing 37-31 at intermission. Milwaukee did start well, building a 20-11 lead just after Johnson picked up his second foul. With Johnson on the bench, the Titans went on a 14-2 scoring run to go ahead, 25-22, in eventually leading by as many as eight points in the first half.
 
Jeter's halftime talk sparked the squad, coming out of the break by making their first five attempts from the floor, with Johnson tying the game at 41-41 on a three with that capped a 10-4 spurt over the first three minutes of the second.
 
Johnson tied the contest again at 47-47 and later found Tiby for an emphatic dunk down the lane that gave UWM the lead at 57-55 with 12 minutes to play.
 
Up 62-60 following a Titan three-pointer, Springs scored five points in a row to extend the margin to 67-60 with just over eight minutes remaining. Johnson came up big again with the shot clock expiring, swishing a three-pointer to make it 70-62, but Detroit would not go away.
 
A Bass dunk cut it to just two at 74-72 and that was when things got a little crazy. Following an inbounds, Johnson was originally called for an offensive foul along the sideline. Following a lengthy official review, the call was reversed and Detroit's Josh McFolley was called for a technical foul for simulating the foul call. Tiby then made both free throws and a final press break from Springs to Tiby to Lyle opened the way for the slam dunk that put it away with 10 seconds left.
 
Milwaukee shot 53.3 percent in the second half to finish at 45.6 percent (26-of-57) for the game despite making just 20.8 percent (5-of-24) from three-point range. Detroit finished at 47.2 percent (25-of-53). UWM also won the rebounding battle at 33-32 and made 26 of 31 free throw attempts in the contest.
 
Up next, the Panthers have just a day off in between games, welcoming Oakland University back downtown Monday for a key Horizon League matchup. Tip time is set for 8 p.m. from UWM Panther Arena.