Ex-Ashwaubenon star Marcus Tomashek seals Michigan Tech win over UWGB
NCAA Division II program Michigan Tech sent the UWGB men’s basketball team to its eighth straight loss Wednesday at the Resch Center.
UWGB men’s basketball coach Doug Gottlieb aims to win more nonconference games this season than the team’s four total wins last year.Gottlieb plans to build the program by recruiting more players from Wisconsin, both from high school and as transfers.The coaching staff has been restructured with specific recruiting territories and roles to improve talent acquisition.Lessons from the previous season include a need for better scheduling, less travel, and recruiting players who fit the program’s culture.
GREEN BAY – The performance by the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay men’s basketball team in the first year of the Doug Gottlieb era was, to say the least, not good.
Nobody wants to be in the conversation for the worst team in the nation.
While the Phoenix lost its best player to a season-ending injury in December and was playing better at the end of the campaign than it was at the beginning, there is no way around 4-28.
With plenty of new players and assistant coaches arriving in the offseason, expectations are higher with the first exhibition game of the season set to take place next month.
This time, UWGB needs to live up to them.
“We want to win more games in nonconference than we did total (last season),” Gottlieb said. “That is the first goal. Let’s try to get above four or five. And, yeah, we want to have a bye in the league tournament.
“We have to be better this year. I wouldn’t be who I am if I wasn’t a competitor. Last year wasn’t acceptable. I loved how they fought, and I loved how people embraced how hard the kids played. I love all those things, but we have got to be better.”
Doug Gottlieb shares vision for UWGB moving forward
With four years remaining on the five-year contract he signed before last season, Gottlieb has strong ideas about how he wants to shape his program.
He believes he has a plan to recruit players here, how to win games and how to consistently be successful in the Horizon League.
One of the most important aspects to him is to build a fence around the state, to get talent that might not immediately be able to play at the University of Wisconsin but still can play Division I.
There are only four from the state on this year’s roster with senior guard Preston Ruedinger (Oshkosh Lourdes), junior forward Marcus Hall (D.C. Everest), sophomore guard Mac Wrecke (Hartland Arrowhead) and freshman guard Keegan VanKauwenberg (Kaukauna).
The hope is to eventually have a team in which at least half the players are from the state.
Not just by recruiting them out of high school, but everywhere.
“We believe the class that we put together is going to be what our classes look like moving forward, the only thing we will likely add more of is Wisconsin players returning home on transfer,” Gottlieb said. “We want to sign Wisconsin players out of high school, and we want to bring back Wisconsin players to play who have left the state and they want to come back and play at home and play for a good program.”
Why such a point of emphasis?
Gottlieb has several reasons.
He thinks there is a better chance homegrown players will stay once they arrive and that they are coming for more reasons than just some money. It doesn’t always happen, considering former Arrowhead star Bennett Basich left for Northern Michigan and the potential for more playing time after his redshirt freshman season.
But for UWGB, there still is more hope of loyalty during a transfer portal era that sometimes doesn’t show much of it.
Having recognizable players might help draw a few more people to games, and in terms of donors, sometimes it’s natural to gravitate toward kids from the state.
“How do you win here? It doesn’t matter how you play, but you have got to have toughness, and you have got to have cohesiveness and win with a higher retention rate,” Gottlieb said. “Guys who really want to play for Green Bay. What I found probably most interesting in high school basketball is how many high school kids want to play for Green Bay.
“You have got to make them want to play for each other, but wanting to play for the school is missing in a lot of places. … That’s not the only way. You can do it like everyone else is doing it in our league, which is just portal hodgepodge, throw teams together every year. There is still a certain amount of that, but I think this place is different. I honestly believe this is the best job in the league.”
Doug Gottlieb learns lessons from his first season
Gottlieb learned plenty during his first year as a college coach.
He was asked if he was surprised by anything and took several seconds to ponder.
“No matter what your style, it’s all the same,” Gottlieb said. “Do you win the turnover battle, can you rebound the ball? Kind of defensive and offensive toughness, more so than execution. We can draw up all kinds of cool plays, but if they don’t execute, it doesn’t matter. If they don’t know the timing of it, the spacing doesn’t matter. None of it matters if you can’t stop anybody and keep turning the ball over.”
Anything else?
“I think we learned the hard way that, though it sounds great to recruit high major players and it looks great when you see it in print, if they are coming to our level for anything other than a longstanding relationship with me or one of our staff members, there is a level of entitlement,” Gottlieb said. “They think they are way better than the league, and they are not. This is a rugged league. What it may lack in refined skill, it makes up for in toughness.”
Gottlieb also needed more experience on his staff and coaches who teach everything the team is asking a player to do. Just like a player needs to be told what their role is, so do coaches.
When it comes to recruiting, assistant Aerick Sanders is the coordinator.
But fellow assistant Keil Ganz has been put in charge of DII, DIII and the northern part of the state. Jerry Smith is Chicago, Milwaukee and some overseas. Sanders is junior college and the portal.
Veteran assistant Andy Ground is known by everyone on the California junior college circuit and will give Gottlieb his evaluations off watching full game film. Fellow veteran coach Kerry Rupp has connections overseas and at most colleges.
As for scheduling, if Gottlieb could do it over again, he would do things differently.
“If you are going to play a Big West team, how about we don’t play the one with the biggest budget?” he said. “You have to strategically understand scheduling. We have got to get to some games where we are favorites.
“But the big thing is, we tried to cut down on the number of flights (this season). We scheduled Minnesota a day and a half after St. Thomas because we wanted one bus trip up, one bus trip back, two games. We tried to do that with Campbell, but we at least ended up getting it spaced out well where we have five or six days between Santa Barbara and that game. We tried to give ourselves more prep time and less travel time.”
The nonconference schedule hasn’t been released, but from the games that are known, UWGB still might not be a favorite in almost any of them except the two against non-DI teams. Of course, Phoenix fans don’t need to be reminded about how those sometimes go.
“We are trying to play more games we know we can be competitive at,” Gottlieb said. “Eventually, I would like to get away from an opener where you are always playing a money game, just because it makes you $10,000 more. Great, but you need some confidence. Kids need confidence in themselves and what they are doing.”