Rising Above The Setbacks
 
They dressed just eight scholarship players some nights. They shuffled starting lineups more than almost any other team in the country. They had to have members of the coaching staff join practice on the court occasionally because of lack of numbers. And yet through it all, the Milwaukee men's basketball team kept stepping onto the floor, navigating a season defined less by rotations and results and more by resilience.
 
With three would-be starters sidelined for the year by midseason and two more key contributors each missing six-week stretches – and that's just the "highlights" of the situation – the Panthers endured one of the most injury-ravaged campaigns in college basketball — forcing a team built on depth and experience to instead rely on grit, growth and next-man-up resolve.
 
Let's take a step backwards into 2025. After a solid summer of building team chemistry and an off-season in which the team kept rising to the top of those preseason ranking prognostications, the season opener was just around the corner. Expectations were high in Panther Land for late October.
 
Just 48 hours before tipoff, the first domino dropped. John Lovelace Jr., who was set to head into a senior campaign in which he was primed and ready for a significant role where the sky was the limit – after all, he averaged 17 points in the two preseason exhibition games – his campaign came crashing to a halt before it even had a chance to reach breakthrough status.
 
It was just a normal practice for the program. Just days before lifting the lid on the new campaign with the home opener against Hampton coming up quickly. What happened next shook everyone in the practice facility that day – a devastating lower leg injury that ended everything before it even officially began.
 
"I think Johnny's injury, of all the other injuries, was the most traumatic for me personally and for the team," head coach Bart Lundy said. "You know, the way it happened, when it happened, and knowing how hard Johnny had worked and the journey he had been on to get to, what I thought, to become our best player. That was traumatic for me personally. Just to see that and to know that it's heartbreaking for him. And then, just the nature of the injury was really bad."
 
Lovelace suffered compound fractures in his lower leg. Without even being touched. Some called it a fluke. Just went to jump and then … wondering what happened as he could see the panic in his teammate's eyes all around him.
 
"It was really tough," associate coach Jose Winston – who has known Lovelace dating back to his youth – said. "Just the injury itself, seeing it. And then I think the biggest thing was just how much work Johnny put into it. He did everything the right way. Everything we told him he needed to improve upon. We saw the work actually all coming together. In our exhibition games, he was unbelievable. And then for him to have an injury like that, that takes him out for the entire season. It was really, really tough. Not just tough on us as coaches and myself, but it really hurt the boys as well, because Johnny had kind of blossomed into our leader. He was the one guy that just kept everybody together. Everybody loved Johnny."
 
Lovelace was rushed from the OHOW that day by emergency medical services, but the Panthers still had to prep for the opener. Dealing with all of the hangover of the incident, the team prevailed over the Pirates, 90-86, with Lundy announcing the injury in his postgame press conference.
 
Just as quickly, the team had to navigate the most challenging non-conference schedule in recent history. Road games were played at Indiana, No. 11 Texas Tech, Wichita State, and Akron. Opponents that, the day each game was played, had combined to be a perfect 18-0 at home this season. In fact, the Zips had won 20 consecutive home games going into the matchup with the Panthers. Texas Tech brought a 41-game winning streak at home against non-conference foes into play.
 
After that trek through the juggernaut of the slate, Horizon League play opened in grand fashion December 6. Milwaukee welcomed Robert Morris – the reigning Horizon League champs and NCAA Tournament participant. The Panthers dug in and came out on top, claiming the 74-72 victory on Seth Hubbard's rebound tip-in at the horn. The buzzer-beater went national, earning a spot on ESPN SportsCenter's "Top 10 Plays of the Day".
 
Hubbard, a transfer into the program, was everything the coaching staff envisioned. Through the first nine games, he was among Horizon League leaders in scoring at 16.6 points per game. A lockdown defender to boot, he was shooting 45 percent from the floor and 76 percent from the line.
 
Oh yeah … that memorable game-winner? Turned out to be the last shot he took as a Panther on the season.
 
Lundy announced Dec. 14 that Hubbard was going to miss the remainder of the season due to a shoulder injury, one that required immediate surgery.
 
Nine games in. Not even Christmas yet and the Panthers were down a pair of 30-minute-a-night starters who were also valuable on defense.
 
"Seth's was a little bit out of the blue," Lundy said. "He had been dealing with the shoulder soreness, and then he made the game-winning tip-in. And he's standing on the table [Hubbard celebrated by jumping on the scorer's table as the fans erupted], and the next day, he can't move his arm. I don't think the players really think about what the impact is going to be, but as a staff, we knew that now John Lovelace, who's 6'7", 6'8", wing, and Seth Hubbard, who's a 6'5", wing, and our two best defensive players, not to mention their scoring ability, were gone, and now your team is completely changed. Your positional size is gone, and you've got a lot of holes to fill."
 
But, as they say, the show must go on.
 
"We had to take on the mindset of 'next man up'," Winston said. "But to get hit with the Johnny injury, and then a few weeks later you have Seth who was scoring 16, 17 points a game. We had to go back to the drawing board thinking hopefully someone else can step up and take on that responsibility. But, to lose one guy that you're really counting on throughout the season is a lot. But to lose another guy that plays the way Seth plays defensively – he was a defensive stopper for us. Had the ability to get in there and create his own shot. Had the ability to knock down and open shots. Coach Lundy had someone that, late in games, you can put the ball in his hands and say, 'Hey, go create a shot for yourself or someone else'. Or, 'hey, go grab the best guy on the opposing team'. And to lose that, it was like just having to go all the way back to the drawing board."
 
Just prior to Hubbard's exit, freshman Stevie Elam went down in the game at Akron Nov. 29 with what looked like a pretty bad ankle sprain. He played through the pain for a few more contests, but the bad luck continued. Diagnosed as a stress fracture, Elam missed the next month-plus of action, right when he was starting to come into his own.
 
"That week, we were putting Stevie into the starting lineup, and on the Monday, his foot was sore, and by Wednesday, we'd x-rayed it, and it was broken," Lundy said. "At that point, you start to wonder, you know, how many guys can you lose, because they were basically all the same position."
 
It sounds like a broken record. A few weeks later, Faizon Fields went down to an ankle injury of his own at Wright State Jan. 1. In a game where the Panthers dug out of a 20-point hole and were poised for a great comeback win against the first-place Raiders, after Fields hit the deck and hobbled off the court, the comeback effort stalled.
 
Hold the phone. Danilo Jovanovich – who had already missed plenty of time last season with an elbow injury and concussion – fell victim to what was quickly becoming the 'who's-next' part of the equation. His shoulder – which had been an issue for a while – finally hit the point where he could not work through the pain anymore. He played his final game against Northern Kentucky Jan. 9, shutdown shortly after with surgery. This coming after averaging 12.4 points and 6.1 rebounds a game, shooting close to 60 percent from the floor.
 
"When Faizon goes down, now we've lost almost all of our size, but we're still playing through Danilo" Lundy said. "And then D'Lo goes down. Of all the injuries, offensively, we were playing through D'Lo more than anybody. He possessed the ball for us, he slowed us down, he was passing, he was handling it, he was scoring, and, at that point, not only have you lost all your defensive size and athleticism, but you've also lost your focal point offensively. So, other than just being feeling like we were bewitched, we had to change everything we were doing on both sides of the ball."

It felt top-heavy to be sure. At this point in the season, Lundy was replacing essentially around 120 minutes of would-be production with other spots down the roster. But it didn't stop there. Chandler Jackson and Simeon Murchison missed games here and there, as did Isaiah Dorceus. Tate Mackenzie fought a knee injury all winter – missing well over 10 games and not 100 percent many times when he wasn't a scratch.
 
"You feel like you've almost lost your whole team," Lundy said. "You've lost all of your experienced guys, all of your guys that have had productive careers in NCAA Division I basketball, and I've never experienced anything like it in my career. I don't know that I know many coaches that have seen this level of injury to good players, to your best players."
 
A look across the NCAA landscape this season shows just what the Panthers were up against. When all was said and done, the team missed well over 100 games to injury – one of the highest totals among the 361 programs playing this season.
 
"I just keep going back to, like, all right, the basketball gods are teaching us some type of lesson," Winston said about the situation. "I mean, everything you go through, there's a lesson to be learned. I think it has made us better coaches. To be honest, some of these guys have gotten opportunities that may not have gotten as much opportunity when all these guys were healthy. But, every guy in that locker room we believe in. That's why we recruited them to come to Milwaukee. Obviously, we're having to throw them into the fire. Some of them a little earlier than we expected. But they're growing and they're developing, and down the stretch of this thing, we were hoping to make some type of run. But the one thing I can say is, big props to Coach Lundy, man. He's kept us competing at a very, very high level when most teams would have been folded by now. And that's a testament to his character, who he is as a coach, and who we have leading our program."
 
The program changed looks over the course of the winter. Had to. Coaches had to see who was available and build game plans for offensive sets and defensive schemes based on what were the new strengths of the next version that was put on the court. Some even had to get out on the court and sweat a little just to get the drills to 10 people for 5-of-5 situations. Even assistant coach Mike Winans was not immune to the situation – catching an elbow to the face that caused him to miss a road trip.
 
"It's tough because as we're getting ready to prepare for a game, we just didn't know who was available at times," Winston said. "When we were in practices, sometimes we were down to eight or nine guys. But we just tried to stay positive and understand that, when we go into battle, we just had to have our guys prepared and ready to go. And hopefully make enough plays to win the game."
 
Just when everyone would think 'what can possibly be next?' it continued to happen. Mackenzie found out in late February that he wasn't coming back and was shut down for the season with his knee issue. And the proverbial cherry on top? Amar Augillard – who was the highest scorer of the remaining healthy players at 12.6 ppg – went hobbling off the court in the final game of the regular season against Youngstown State Feb. 25 – finding out a few days later that he was done as a Panther in 2025-26 and was just another player to add to the list.
 
"We also lost Simeon and Tate at times, and we were starting Aaron Franklin at the five, at our center spot, and when everyone was healthy, he was playing the three," Lundy said. "So, you're now at 6'5" and we're maybe the only Division I team in the country with a six-five center. It has changed everything that we've had to do, and we've had to plug guys into different roles and recreate our systems. The guys themselves had to play all different positions, and it may not sound like a big deal to everyone, but you want to play a position and get good at it, and now you're doing something completely different."
 
There are some silver linings. The depth of the team was tested immensely, and the roster answered the call time and time again. Despite a win-loss record that won't reflect the full truth, the team continued to play hard and battle every night and was in nearly every contest after the calendar turned to 2026. There was a group of three freshmen that, had things stayed injury-free, would not have seen the playing time for growth and development that the eventual situation provided.
 
Elam averaged 10.5 points and 4.7 rebounds per game, shooting 81 percent from the line on his way to Horizon League All-Freshmen Team accolades. Josh Dixon contributed 9.0 points a night and shot 87 percent from the charity stripe and was named Lou Henson Award National Mid-Major Player of the Week back in December when he scored 52 points in back-to-back games. His 28 against Cleveland State Dec. 21 was actually the fourth-most scored in a game by a freshman in school history. Sekou Konneh brought energy to every minute on the court, checking in at 6.4 points and 4.7 rebounds a game – including a pair of double-doubles – in just 13.5 minutes on the floor each night. Despite the limited minutes, Konneh ranked in the Top 20 in rebounds in the league and near the Top 10 in blocks.
 
Lessons to be learned for sure. And in many different ways as well.
 
"To be thankful for health (laughs)," Winston said when asked what this season taught him. "To be thankful for the opportunity to play the game and to coach the game. But you have to continue to recruit really good players, which we have. Because if we hadn't, then the season would have been a lot worse than what it was. We really did believe that we could beat anybody in the conference when it came to playoff time. So, we were hoping to continue to develop those guys to have enough experience to make a deep postseason run."
 
The MKE athletic communications staff did the research and ran the data over the course of the season when it came to games missed across the country. The Panthers finished the year with over 100 games missed by their injured players. Now they may have 'only' finished sixth on the list, but if you look at the other teams ahead of Milwaukee … the Panthers did reasonably well in the results column compared to others.
 
Boston University finished as the "winner" on the list with nine of its players combining to miss a whopping 204 games this year. The Terriers somehow found a way to finish a very respectable 17-17, including an unexpected postseason run.
 
Binghamton was next at 175 missed from 12 players. The Bearcats went 8-23.
LaSalle had 10 players miss 152 games. The results? A 9-23 season.
Delaware was up fourth, with 139 missed from nine players. The Blue Hens went 10-21. Bucknell was also a member of the walking wounded. The Bison saw six players unavailable for 132 contests. A 10-23 campaign followed.
 
"I don't necessarily think it's about the wins," Winston said. "Like Coach Lundy always says, we just want to make sure we get up every single day and make sure we're at our best. And the one thing I can say about this team is every single day they got up and they competed. They didn't miss practice. They didn't want handouts. They didn't feel sorry for themselves. They got up, they competed. They gave themselves an opportunity to win games. Injuries or not, we still had enough talent, we believed, to make a deep postseason run."
 
The Panthers followed on the overall list with 108 missed by their group of nine. The 12-20 record included a respectable 8-6 mark at home. For a local comparison, Marquette finished with an identical 12-20 overall mark despite a healthy roster. So, at the end of the day, MKE's entry produced the second-most victories of the decimated rosters highlighted above.
 
"I think that the great thing is, even though our record was not what we wanted it to be, we were competitive in almost all the games," Lundy said. "They showed tremendous resiliency and fight, and we had to give guys opportunities, and you've seen growth. We finally had that final group for a few weeks, and you could start to see that they were becoming a team. But you know, it is basically a completely different squad than we had to begin the year."
 
Maybe this season will never be remembered for what it was supposed to be back in October. Maybe it won't be defined by preseason predictions or the lineup combinations that never quite materialized. Instead, it may be remembered for something far more lasting — the toughness forged in short-handed practices, the freshmen thrown into bigger roles, the veterans who refused to let the locker room fracture, and a program that never stopped competing. Injuries rewrote the script, but they never changed the standard. And as Milwaukee stepped into March, battered but not beaten, the Panthers carried something no stat sheet can measure — a belief hardened by adversity that they were still hopeful of writing one more chapter.
 
As it turned out, it was not meant to be. March didn't bring the extended postseason run many expected when the year began. Still, the Panthers' season will be remembered less for who wasn't available and more for how those who were continued to battle — night after night, possession after possession — embodying the kind of perseverance that often defines college basketball at its core, shown in heavy doses by Milwaukee this winter.