“How do you create magic?”
That’s the query that Inexperienced Bay males’s basketball coach Sundance Wicks weighed after a 79-71 win over Cleveland State Jan. 14.
“It’s a kind of issues the place you watch sufficient basketball, and there’s some issues you possibly can clarify and a few you possibly can’t,” he mentioned.
The turnaround within the Inexperienced Bay Mens Basketball program has been actually noticeable. Manufacturing, followers, environment, and so on.
It’s exceptional if you already know what a 3 win season seemed like a yr in the past.@CoachSundance’s opening remarks after Sunday’s win about constructing the magic was nice: pic.twitter.com/RjzwPety9N
— Kyle Malzhan (@KyleMalzhan) January 16, 2024
After the Phoenix completed final season with a 3-29 document — tied with Cal for the worst document in school basketball — the workforce’s accomplishments in Wicks’ first yr on the helm are nothing wanting magic.
“There was no higher job within the nation than Inexperienced Bay,” Wicks surmised at his introductory press convention in March 2023, “and I can inform you why. The place can we go? Up.”
It took lower than a month for UWGB to surpass the three-win plateau, and the workforce has solely improved from there. Inexperienced Bay sits at 15-9, and its 10-3 mark in Horizon League play places it atop the convention.
Per school basketball analytics guru Andrew Weatherman, no first-year coach has engineered a bigger enhance from their workforce’s preseason to present KenPom ranking (adjusted effectivity margin) than Wicks’ Inexperienced Bay squad.
“It’s a problem, sure. It’s a singular impediment, sure. However why not run into the hearth?” Wicks speculated. “Why not come to this job? Why not come to Inexperienced Bay? That’s my name.”
A New Period
In a decidedly football-first city, College of Wisconsin-Inexperienced Bay basketball has carved out a modest existence within the shadow of Lambeau Discipline.
The UWGB ladies’s basketball program has by no means skilled a shedding season in 33 years of play and is coming off a current stretch of 17 NCAA Event appearances in 21 years.
On the lads’s aspect, Inexperienced Bay’s forte is exporting savvy head coaches. UWGB was the Division-I teaching launch level for Dick Bennett, who later led Wisconsin to the Remaining 4. Newer coaches embrace Tod Kowalczyk — who has seven postseason appearances at Toledo since becoming a member of the Rockets in 2010 — and Bradley head coach Brian Wardle, on tempo for a fifth 20-win marketing campaign with the Braves. Regardless of the bevy of teaching expertise to take the ground on the Resch Heart, the Inexperienced Bay males’s workforce has only one NCAA Event look within the final 28 seasons (2015-16).
Sundance Wicks is poised to alter that. The fiery Wyoming native had two years of head teaching expertise at Missouri Western from 2018-20 earlier than spending the final two years as an assistant to Jeff Linder at Wyoming. Teaching a pro-style offense with stars like Hunter Maldonado and Graham Ike in 2022, Linder and Wicks led the Cowboys to their first at-large bid within the NCAA Event in 20 years.
Wyoming was a nine-win workforce the yr earlier than Wicks joined the workers in 2020. The brand new Inexperienced Bay coach is already engineering the same turnaround on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Constructing Perception
Inheriting a 3-28 workforce with simply two gamers isn’t an excellent scenario to take over. Wicks embraced the empty slate, utilizing it as a possibility to herald his kind of fellows.
“Eleven of the 13 guys on this roster, their solely scholarship provide was to Inexperienced Bay,” Wicks famous. “All of those guys had been the blokes that had been under-recruited, under-evaluated, and have overachieved.”
Elijah Jones is the workforce’s second-leading scorer at 8.8 PPG, a greater scoring common than he achieved at neighborhood school final yr at John A. Logan. Jones — the primary commit of the Wicks period — is hitting 75% of his two-point makes an attempt in opposition to Horizon League opponents.
Foster Wonders, a rarely-used bench participant for Southern Illinois as a redshirt freshman final yr, is capturing 45.7% from deep in convention play. He was a 33% shooter from deep a season in the past.
5 Phoenix gamers have an offensive ranking of 123.0 or higher in convention play, however haven’t been extra environment friendly than David Douglas Jr. Douglas — who had no DI affords out of highschool — has three 20-point video games in his final 4 contests and is a three-time Horizon League Freshman of the Week.
How does Sundance Wicks get probably the most out of those neglected gamers?
“They consider in one another,” Wicks mentioned of this Phoenix workforce. “They consider within the work. They consider within the artwork of getting an edge.”
These forgotten gamers shaped the inspiration for this season’s success, however the addition of the most effective scorers within the switch portal — Noah Reynolds — grew to become the workforce’s catalyst.
Reynolds was Wyoming’s second-leading scorer a yr in the past, averaging 14.5 PPG. He had 5 straight contests in non-conference play with not less than 20 factors earlier than lacking the final month of the season with a concussion. The 6-foot-3-inch guard entered the portal in March 2023, drawing important high-major consideration. Inside a month, he dedicated to Wisconsin, a call that lasted simply two weeks when Reynolds determined to re-open his dedication.
“I didn’t assume that might be the perfect scenario for what I used to be in search of,” Reynolds later famous.
After reopening his recruitment, he acquired calls from Energy Convention faculties like Miami (FL), Florida, and Ohio State. However a pair of highly effective private connections led the previous Wyoming star to enroll at Inexperienced Bay.
Reynolds’ brother Nic is on the UWGB workers, and the junior performed his first two collegiate seasons beneath Sundance Wicks — then an assistant at Wyoming. Reynolds embraced the problem of a rebuild.
“Constructing one thing from the bottom up is one thing I’ve at all times taken pleasure in. I knew the worth of time moderately than cash,” he mentioned. “I feel I understood the worth of household and sticking with the individuals who trusted you to start with.”
Constructing on that belief, Reynolds has been nothing wanting a revelation for the Phoenix. He has established himself as a frontrunner for Convention Participant of the Yr, averaging 19.3 PPG on the season and upping that mark to twenty.8 PPG throughout league play. He’s additionally the convention’s chief in assists.
The workforce grappled via a tough non-conference slate with journeys to Huge 12 faculties Iowa State and Oklahoma. This battle-tested workforce discovered its groove when Horizon League play got here round.
Final Man Standing
For a workforce with such little expertise, Coach Wicks’ squad has impressed with its potential to shut out video games.
“‘Everyone’s bought a plan till you get punched within the mouth,’” Wicks mentioned to WFRV reporter Kyle Malzhan in Inexperienced Bay, quoting the nice Mike Tyson. “When you get punched within the mouth, we’re going to search out out what we’re fabricated from. You’re both pumping blood or Kool-Help, and I hope we’re pumping blood.”
UWGB has taken its share of punches this yr. The workforce has trailed by not less than 5 factors in eight of its 9 HL wins this season — together with a pair of comebacks after deficits of greater than 10 factors.
Within the ultimate recreation of the calendar yr, Inexperienced Bay used a 17-5 second-half run and a subsequent 14-0 stretch to overturn a 10-point deficit and defeat a mighty Wright State workforce 88-77. Reynolds had a career-high 39 factors in that contest, the primary of 5 30-point video games on the season. Just a few weeks later, a late 14-1 run put away Cleveland State — a end result once more fueled by the Resch Heart crowd.
“Each time we come again into the Resch, it will get rowdier,” Wicks mentioned in a current postgame presser. “I hear the tales of Wardle and Kowalczyk once they had been 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 robust. We’d like that in some unspecified time in the future, and it’ll get there.”
For a 69-59 win over Oakland on Jan. 25, 3,153 followers watched the Phoenix climb to first place within the Horizon League. UWGB used a patented 9-0 run to tug away within the ultimate minutes.
Whereas the Phoenix have an undefeated document at house throughout the convention slate, in addition they confronted the league’s hardest remaining league schedule — not that Sundance Wicks has retreated from a battle this season.
“We talked in regards to the Discipline of Desires now — when you construct it, they are going to come,” Wicks mentioned. “Properly, it’s being constructed; carry your ass out.”
