MILWAUKEE – Te'Jon Lucas and Josh Thomas combined for 37 points in their Panther debuts and the Milwaukee men's basketball team used a 22-to-4 scoring run that spanned both halves to claim a 72-62 victory over Concordia Wisconsin Tuesday evening at UWM Panther Arena.
 
Lucas finished with a game-high 19 points, stuffing the stat sheet with seven rebounds and seven assists for the Panthers (1-0).
 
Thomas went for 18 points and a team-high eight rebounds, adding a pair of assists.
 
"They gave us all we could handle," head coach Pat Baldwin said about CUW. "The first half was back-and-forth until the latter part of the half when we took control and started to understand what they were doing to us. Defensively, I thought we did a great job from the end of the first half into the second."
 
DeAndre Abram joined them in double-figures, finishing with 14 points following a big first half, connecting on 4-of-9 three-pointers. He also collected seven rebounds.
 
"I was pleased for the most part with our guys and their effort," Baldwin said. "There are a lot of things we can work on – there's no question about that – but in your first game when you are scouting an opponent and it's the first time seeing them, I thought our guys made the necessary adjustments in order to get this win tonight."
 
Olelekan George paced the Falcons with 16 points. Joey Zietlow just missed a double-double, finishing with 12 points and nine boards.
 
Slow out of the gates, Milwaukee went ahead, 13-9, on a Thomas three-pointer and built the advantage to 18-12 on a layup and free throw for Lucas with just under 10 left.
 
CUW pushed back, helped along by a cold MKE spell from the floor and were back within a basket at 25-23 at the under-four media timeout.
 
From there it was all Milwaukee, scoring nine of the final 11 points before intermission to take a 34-25 lead at the break.
 
It continued into the second, culminating with nine points in a row to push the advantage to 20 for the first time at 47-27 on a fastbreak layup by Courtney Brown Jr. at the 15:33 mark. In all, the scoring run that gave Milwaukee control totaled 22-to-4.
 
The team would lead by as many as 22 with just under 14 minutes to play, and was still at 20 at 64-44 with just over six minutes left before closing the gap to 10 down the stretch.
 
Neither team was strong from the floor, with MKE at 38.6 percent (27-of-70) and Concordia Wisconsin finishing the contest at 36.7 percent (22-of-60). The defense forced 17 miscues, turning that into an 18-8 edge in points off turnovers.
 
Up next, the Panthers are set for their homecoming contest against Western Michigan, tipping off at 6 p.m. downtown Saturday evening.