MILWAUKEE – The Milwaukee men's basketball team used another strong defensive effort as well as a 19-0 scoring run in the second half to take over and claim a 54-44 victory over Green Bay Sunday afternoon at UWM Panther Arena.
 
"The defense saved us this afternoon," head coach Pat Baldwin said. "We were awful in the first half offensively, but we stuck with it on the defensive end and carried forward to the second half. We finally got some baskets to fall in the second half."
 
The Panthers (9-18, 7-11 Horizon League) held the Phoenix (4-21, 3-13 Horizon League) to just 26.0 percent from the field on the day, the sixth time this season they have held an opponent under 30 percent.
 
"Just proud of our guys, especially from where we were at the beginning of the week to where we ended up at the end of the week," Baldwin said. "Proud of the guys for their resilience and can't say enough about them."
 
Donovan Newby led the charge in the second half, finishing with a team-high 17 points, adding two assists, two steals, and two rebounds in setting a new career-best in scoring.
 
DeAndre Gholston contributed with 12 points, while also grabbing eight rebounds. Moses Bol continues to grow as a presence in the paint, finishing with eight rebound and five blocks – with all of the rejections coming in the second half. Both the rebound and bliock totals were NCAA-highs for Bol.
 
The Phoenix were led by Cade Meyer's 18 points and seven rebounds.
 
Green Bay was in control at the break and pieced together an 11-4 run over both halves that took the score to 26-17. The visitors would still be ahead at 35-27 before the Panthers took over.
 
Newby again played a key role, hitting back-to-back three's to first tie the game at 35-all and then put MKE ahead at 38-35 with 7:44 to play.
 
The scoring run kept growing as the defense kept forcing misses, hitting 13-0 on a Simms jumper and then capped at 19-0 on a Gholston free throw that saw the scoreboard read 44-35 Panthers with 4:17 to play. GB did cut the deficit to five, but the result was never in doubt, helped along by a 4-4 showing from the line over the final 31 seconds.
 
The ice-cold first half was one to forget for the Panthers, connecting on just 26.1 percent of their shots in the period. After the team made just one of its first eight, Newby came off the bench to knock down a three and push MKE ahead 6-5 at the 12:24 mark.
 
Tafari Simms would knot it at 11-all, with the defensive battle seeing both teams start just 4-of-15 from the floor. Green Bay would hold the 22-17 advantage at intermission.
 
Neither team shot well on the afternoon, seeing MKE finish at 34.1 percent (15-of-44), compared to the excellent defensive work of 26.0 percent (13-of-50) for Green Bay. One of the most glaring statistics was a 36-1 advantage in bench points, with the home team also posting a 39-30 advantage in rebounds.
 
Following a stretch of three games in just five days, Milwaukee remains home but is off until Friday. That evening, the Panthers host first-place Cleveland State at 7 p.m.