CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Milwaukee men's basketball team nearly erased an 18-point deficit over the final seven minutes of the contest, cutting the margin to just four before Cleveland State was able to survive the rally and claim a 62-53 victory Saturday afternoon at the Wolstein Center.
 
Bryce Nze led the offense with 14 points, making 7-of-9 shots from the field in an efficient afternoon. Brock Stull ended with 10 points despite missing nearly all of the first half with two early fouls.
 
"I keep saying this – these guys are resilient and they have some grit to them," Milwaukee head coach LaVall Jordan said. "They decided to fight. We tried to get aggressive defensively to see if we could force some turnovers or some hurried shots and I thought that helped us. Our guys have some fight in them. If they are going down, they are going to go down swinging. I am extremely proud of that because we could have caved."
 
Three other players contributed seven points each – Brett Prahl, Jeremiah Bell and Jeremy Johnson.
 
Demonte Flannigan paced CSU with a near double-double of 18 points and nine rebounds. The Panthers held Rob Edwards – one of the top scorers in the Horizon League at 15.8 ppg coming in – to just three points while also forcing him into committing six turnovers.
 
"I thought we executed well on both ends of the floor late in the game," Jordan said. "We pressed, we gave ourselves a chance to be in it going down the stretch."
 
The Panthers (4-11, 0-2 Horizon League) had to deal with hot shooting by the Vikings (5-9, 1-1 Horizon League) in the second half, as the home team hit over 70 percent (13-of-18) of its shots from the floor in the period, including an off-balance three-pointer with the shot clock expiring that banked in to give them a 50-32 advantage with 6:58 to play.
 
Milwaukee could have called it a day at that point, but a spirited rally followed a timeout. A 17-5 scoring run made it a new game, with a dunk by Nze starting it. August Haas and Cody Wichmann connected on 3's and another triple from Stull pulled Milwaukee within six at 55-49.
 
Bell made a layup following a pair of CSU free throws and, after forcing a turnover, Brett Prahl's free throws with 56 seconds remaining made it a four-point affair at 57-53. That would be as close as UWM could get however, as the Panthers ran out of time before completing the comeback.
 
Milwaukee came out sluggish in a first-half that produced just 16 points. It appeared evident the team had played 50 minutes less than 48 hours prior, shooting under 30 percent in the opening frame.
 
"Defensively, we were where we wanted to be," Jordan said. "They were shooting 40 percent and only had 25 points. Second half we changed and made some adjustments. We attacked on the drive and finished better and then we started to get some of the 3's to fall."
 
Great defense really kept the Panthers in the game early, holding CSU to a 5-for-20 start from the floor before the Vikings made five baskets in a row to take the first substantial lead by either team at 25-16 at intermission.
 
A pair of fouls sent Stull to the bench just 1:56 in for a rocky start. The defense was great to open, limiting the Vikings to just one made field goal on 10 tries over the first seven minutes.
 
The Panthers were the first team to 10 points, taking a 10-8 lead when Prahl split a pair of tosses from the charity stripe. Empty possessions followed for both teams for a stretch, with Johnson tying the game up at 12-12 with 4:39 left in the period and again at 14-all on a layup by Nze. That late hot stretch was the difference in the first half, with CSU scoring 11 of the final 13 points of the period.
 
Despite the slow start, the Vikings made it all the way back up to 53.5 percent (23-of-43) for the game after the red-hot second half effort. UWM finished at 42.2 percent (19-of-45), hurting its cause with just a 9-of-18 showing at the line. Milwaukee turned the ball over just nine times on the afternoon.
 
Up next, the team remains on the road for the third game in a row to open league play, heading to Green Bay for an instate showdown with the Phoenix Friday. Tip off is set for 7 p.m.