To look up and down and back and forth across the box score, and this surely must have been a Milwaukee Panthers win.
Shots. Rebounds. Turnovers. Free throws. You name it, UWM led Indiana State across the box except two key lines: shooting percentage and total points.
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With its top scorer out for the season, one of its hottest shooters on the bench with cramps and another suddenly cold, the Panthers fell to the Sycamores 70-68 in a Sunday matinee Dec. 12 at the UWM Panther Arena.
Box score: Indiana State 70, Milwaukee 68
UWM, which went the final 3:09 without a basket, missed an opportunity to reach the .500 mark and sits at 4-6 with another nonconference game next on the schedule Dec. 19 against South Dakota State at Fiserv Forum.
Indiana State managed just its second road victory of the season in reaching 7-4. The game was the first between the teams since 2009 and ninth overall. The Sycamores have won seven.
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“It’s hard to see this one slip away because that’s a tough a Missouri Valley team in our place, and you want to get that one,” Panthers coach Bart Lundy said. “We let it slip away, a very, very good opportunity slip away. We’ve got to move on, get better.”
UW-Milwaukee forward Danilo Jovanovich (3) looks for a way around the defense of Indiana State guard Jo Van Buggenhout (6) in a game Sunday, December 14, 2025, at the UWM Panther Arena in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Seth Hubbard’s injury and cramps for Stevie Elam vex the Panthers
Senior transfer guard Seth Hubbard, who averaged 16.6 points a game over the first nine games, is lost for the season, Lundy said after the game.
Hubbard suffered an injury to his right shoulder early in the seasons and tried to play through it, but results of recent imaging indicated surgery was necessary.
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Freshman guard Stevie Elam connected on 4 of 8 3-point attempts and had 13 points in the first half. That’s how he finished, though, after being forced out of the game midway through the second half with right leg cramps, returning briefly and then pulling himself for good with 7:10 remaining.
“If Stevie doesn’t cramp, we probably win,” Lundy said. “He was playing really well. And he’s got one kidney, so we’re going to battle that a good bit.”
A survivor of childhood cancer, Elam is affected intermittently by cramping, which hit at a particularly unfortunate time in this game.
“It’s something he’s aware of,” Lundy said. “We hydrate, but it pops up from time to time.”
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Faizon Fields, the graduate forward who dealt with broken fingers, is coming off illness – probably COVID-19, Lundy said – that kept him out of the loss to Akron.
Add that to the loss of the Panthers’ expected top defender, John Lovelace Jr., who suffered a severe leg injury three days before the opener.
“Johnny’s not coming back, Seth’s not coming back,” Lundy said. “That’s two senior guards, long, athletic guys who’ve played a lot of college basketball.
“It’s opportunity for others, but if we don’t seize that opportunity better than we did today, it’s just going to be a struggle for us.”
Plain and simple, cold shooting loses basketball games
UWM hit just one of its first nine shots to start the game and then went the final 3:06 without scoring a basket, getting only free throws from Fields the rest of the way.
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The Panthers were outshot 50.0% to 35.8% for the game and 33.3% to 19.2% from beyond the 3-point line. Both percentages were significantly worse than season averages and the 3-point percentage was a season low. They played from behind the final 10:02.
“Our starting three guards were 3 for 25, with [three] rebounds, five assists, [three] turnovers,” Lundy said. “Without Seth, guys got opportunities, and we really need those guys to come in and perform. And that’s what I told them in the locker room, you’re gonna get opportunity. You need to really step up. And I think they will.
“We got wide open shots and point blank. We missed six 1-foot layups there at the beginning of the game. Then we started making more tougher plays at the rim, but we’ve got to better at the rim, no matter what. We’re getting the ball right to the rim, and we got to be able to power through it and put the ball in the basket.”
Amar Augillard finished 0 for 10, including 0 for 5 from 3-point range, Isaiah Dorceus went 2 for 10 and Esyah Pippa-White was 1 for 5. Augillard’s ineffectiveness was particularly troubling, as the redshirt senior transfer came into the game averaging 11.0 points with a pair of 20-point games.
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“My message has been consistently if your shot’s not falling, you’ve got to do other things for us,” Lundy said of Augillard, whose misses included two airballs. “He’s really been trying to do that. He had a little lapse tonight, where I think he just got frustrated and slipped back into some bad defensive habits.
“I thought he got good looks. One of the things he does was when the 3 is not falling sometimes he over-dribbles, just trying to make something happen for himself. … It would be nice for him to see the ball going in.”
Danilo Jovanovich and Faizon Fields led UWM with 16 points each, with Jovanovich scoring 14 in the first half and Fields all his points after the break.
When the Sycamores’ Camp Wagner missed a free throw with 24.5 seconds left – his first miss after 30 consecutive makes over three games – the Panthers were in the game.
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Jovanovich had a chance to tie the score with 5.6 seconds left but missed a pair of free throws. Enel St. Bernard missed on the other end, and Fields got the rebound to Josh Dixon, but his desperation heave at the buzzer from deep missed.
If there are positives to take from this loss …
Fields’s play in the second half was vital for Milwaukee as he added five of his eight rebounds and a steal along with his 16 points. UWM will need more of that, especially with Hubbard now gone.
“He really struggled to just find his wind [while ill] and so it was good to see him get his confidence back there in the second half,” Lundy said.
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For the second time in two games and just the third time this season, Milwaukee played in a game decided by 10 points or fewer. The experience, coming on the heels of a two-point win in its Horizon League opener against Robert Morris, could prove helpful when conference play begins in earnest on New Year’s Day.
“The end game was good for us, and end game [situations] are even better when you wrap them up, because you go back and review and say, OK, this is what we want to do in this situation. This is what we did well and what we didn’t do well. So that’ll be good.
“But I mean, systematically, we got about every margin that we wanted. When you look at the stat sheet, Milwaukee should not lose this game.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UW-Milwaukee Panthers lose to Indiana State; top scorer out for season
