When the baseball season is over and the leaves are gently falling, it can only mean one thing: It’s time for basketball in Milwaukee.
It’s been one of the best stretches in history to be a college basketball fan in the Cream City, but Marquette’s longstanding philosophy regarding one of the sport’s biggest factors could be significantly tested this season. Five of the 10 players who played significant minutes for the Golden Eagles either graduated or left the program this offseason (including National Player of the Year candidate Kam Jones), but they’re one of just three major conference programs that did not take in a single transfer. Head coach Shaka Smart has had success building from within before, but the experts are going to have to see it to believe it this season. His Golden Eagles didn’t receive a single vote in the preseason Associated Press poll, their #47 spot in Ken Pomeroy’s preseason rankings is their lowest since his first season in Milwaukee, and the Big East’s preseason poll has them picked to finish fifth.
Meanwhile, Bart Lundy is working to continue one of the best eras of basketball in UW-Milwaukee’s history into another year. The Panthers won 21 games last season to give them at least 20 wins in three consecutive seasons, something they hadn’t done in almost 20 years. They’re replacing almost 80% of the minutes from last year’s team, but there’s some optimism they’ll be able to rebuild on the fly. They received 24 of the 42 first place votes in the Horizon League’s preseason poll and have three players on the league’s preseason all-conference team, including incoming transfer guard Amar Aguillard on the first team.
Together, the two squads will host 12 regular season non-conference games in Milwaukee against 11 teams over the next two months. Here are the teams they’ll welcome into town, ranked:
11. Dominican (Illinois) at Milwaukee on November 25
The good news is there’s only one non-Division 1 opponent on Milwaukee’s non-conference schedule this season. The bad news is that, once again, the Division III team coming to the Klotsche Center is highly unlikely to force a competitive game. The Stars went 5-13 in NACC conference play last season and lost their top five scorers over the offseason. There were only a handful of Division 1 teams to lose to any non-D1 opponent last season and no D3 team has beaten a D1 team since 2022.
10. Central Michigan at Marquette, November 22
The transfer portal era has created some challenges for several members of the one-time upper tier of mid-major conferences, as their top players often are attractive candidates to move on to power conference programs. Plus the budget and wherewithal don’t always exist for these schools to replace that talent. This has been hard on the Mid American Conference (MAC) as a whole and especially tough on Central Michigan, where the Chippewas have finished among the bottom 25% of Division 1 programs in four of the last five seasons. The lone exception was last year, when they rode a small rotation to a 10-17 record against D1 opponents and KenPom had them ranked 198th. They still failed to qualify the MAC tournament and their head coach left for an assistant job at another school after last season.
New head coach Andy Bronkema is taking the top job at a D1 program for the first time, but spent the last 12 seasons at Division II Ferris State, where he won a national championship and nine conference titles. He’s starting from scratch, as the players who accounted for 99.4% of last year’s minutes are gone. He did add three transfers from D1 programs including former Michigan freshman and all-time great nickname-haver Durall “Phat Phat” Brooks, but it’s probably going to take more than that to turn this program around. The league’s preseason poll has them finishing 12th in the 13-team MAC.
9. Valparaiso at Marquette on December 2
There was a time where Valparaiso was one of college basketball’s brand name mid-major programs. Legendary coach Homer Drew took the then-Crusaders to five straight NCAA tournaments in the ‘90s and his son Bryce (author of one of the greatest buzzer beaters in NCAA history) brought them to two more in the 2010s. That success has not carried over to the current era, however. Since leaving the Horizon League for the Missouri Valley Conference, Valparaiso is 49-101 in conference games and has never had a winning season in league play.
The MVC is one of the nation’s top mid-major conferences, but the league’s preseason poll and the sport’s most prominent projection models (Ken Pomeroy, Bart Torvik, and EvanMiya) all have the Beacons predicted or projected to finish last in it. They return less than 6% of the minutes from a team that only won six of their 20 conference games last season. Their best hope to improve might be former Texas A&M Corpus Christi wing Owen Dease, an efficient scorer in limited shots last season.
8. Albany at Marquette on November 3
Fans who are familiar with the America East Conference might know it as “the league with Vermont in it,” as the Catamounts have represented the conference in three of the last four and nine of the last 22 NCAA Tournaments. They’re probably the best team in their league again this year, but Albany is one of the top threats to challenge them.
The Great Danes had an extremely busy offseason on the transfer portal in terms of depth, although it’s unclear if the players they added can mesh or thrive in a new environment. BartTorvik projects all of them at between 0.6 and -0.6 points per game above replacement level. This may or may not work, but at least it creates a wide range of possible outcomes. This team could be an abject disaster or could go back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2015.
7. Hampton at Milwaukee on November 3
Not unlike Valparaiso above, Hampton was once a pretty regular contender in a smaller conference before moving up a weight class and struggling to make the jump. They made back-to-back NCAA Tournaments as a member of the MEAC in the 2010s before moving to the Big South and eventually the Coastal Athletic Association, then known as the Colonial. Their league elevation coincided with a disastrous sequence of events for the program, as they were forced to vacate their wins across two seasons for using ineligible players.
The Pirates made the relatively unconventional decision two years ago to hire longtime high school and AAU coach Ivan Thomas as their head coach. However, he led them to their first winning season since the spring of 2019. His overhaul included a much slower tempo, and reducing the number of possessions in a game makes them a much better candidate to pull off upsets. They’re still only in the middle of the pack in the CAA, but that’s a massive step up from where they were two years ago.
6. Indiana State at Milwaukee on December 14
Depending on their age, most basketball fans likely remember two faces when they picture Indiana State: The legendary Larry Bird, who led the Sycamores to the national title game in 1979, or the Rec Spec-wearing Robbie Avila, a viral star for his shotmaking and unusual look two years ago. Neither Bird nor Avila still play in Terre Haute. Avila left with then-head coach Josh Schertz when he took the Saint Louis job following that season. New head coach Matthew Graves struggled to replicate Schertz’s success in his first year on the job, going 8-12 in a tough Missouri Valley conference. Things took a turn for the worse when he required emergency heart surgery this fall, and he’s currently away from the team indefinitely.
Back on the court, the most interesting thing about the current era of the Sycamores is their up-tempo pace. They were the ninth fastest moving team in the nation last year, and they’ll likely try to speed up even a quick-paced Milwaukee team. They’re a good shot making group when they get a chance, but playing fast often goes hand-in-hand with playing sloppy, and last year Indiana State was among the worst teams in the nation in turnover percentage. They have a preseason all-MVC player in wing Camp Wagner, a three point marksman.
5. Southern at Marquette on November 5
One of the fall’s toughest schedules makes a pit stop in Milwaukee during the season’s first week when Southern, who plays Arkansas on Monday, brings their tired legs north to Fiserv Forum to face Marquette less than 48 hours later. Things will get harder before they get easier for the Jaguars, who play just three home games during non-conference play and will also make trips to Washington, Texas, Baylor, and Illinois.
They’re going to take some lumps with a really difficult schedule, but once they get to a normal routine in conference play, this Southern team might be one of the best SWAC teams in recent memory. They return over half of the minutes from a group that won the league’s regular season title last year, and they’ve added three D1 transfers. They were in the top half of the nation in defensive rating a year ago and that projects to carry over, although they may get off to a rough start on account of their tough schedule in November. KenPom has them as the nation’s 165th best team, which would make them the SWAC’s top squad since 2013.
4. Little Rock at Milwaukee on November 10 and Marquette on November 12
One of mid-major athletics’ fastest-rising programs will play a twin bill in Milwaukee during the second week of the season when Little Rock (sometimes known as Arkansas-Little Rock, not to be confused with the University of Arkansas) visits UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena on the second Monday of the season, then travels two blocks north to visit Marquette at Fiserv Forum on the following Wednesday. This season, the Trojans are preparing to make a significant jump in weight class: Next year they’re leaving the low-D1 Ohio Valley Conference (where they’ve only played for three seasons) to join the new United Athletic Conference, a nine-member league mostly featuring schools big enough to host FBS football.
As of a month ago, UALR was named to be favorites to represent the OVC in the big dance for the first time since 2016. They’ve gone 26-12 in conference play over the last two seasons and they’re coming into this season ranked #152 in KenPom. Yet they’ve already suffered a major setback as senior guard and former Arkansas recruit KK Robinson—who was coming back from an injury that cost him the entire 2024-25 season—now also isn’t expected to play this year. That puts more pressure on guard Jonathan Lawson and wing Tuongthach Gatkek, both of whom were selected to the league’s all-preseason team.
3. South Dakota State at Milwaukee (at Fiserv Forum) on December 19
The “Cream City Challenge,” where Milwaukee hosted three notable mid-major teams last year, is not back on their schedule for this fall. However, they will still get to make the trip down the street to Fiserv Forum this year for a single-game event, facing South Dakota State in the Milwaukee Hoops Showdown. It’s hard to find a more consistently strong mid-major program than the Jackrabbits, who have finished in Ken Pomeroy’s top 100 in seven of the last 14 seasons and been the top-rated team in the Summit League in nine of them. The Jackrabbits have had so much success in recent years, in fact, that their last two head coaches have both moved on to other programs: T.J. Otzelberger left for UNLV (and later Iowa State) and, following last season, Eric Henderson moved south to Drake. Longtime assistant Bryan Petersen is stepping into the job.
Many mid-major head coaching turnovers lead to a talent exodus, but Petersen kept more than half of the minutes from last year’s roster. With that continuity, they project to have one of mid-major basketball’s best offenses. Nine of the 10 players BartTorvik has projected to be their top contributors are all rated at or above average on the offensive end, so they almost certainly won’t hurt for scorers. The Summit League is relatively wide open this season, but it’s possible South Dakota State is the best among them.
2. Dayton at Marquette on November 19
One of college basketball’s least predictable programs in recent years, Dayton has been among the sport’s elite teams and among the teams unjustly left out of the NCAA tournament, but typically not on years where those outcomes were expected. They were among the favorites to win a national championship before the tournament was cancelled in the spring of 2020. Since then, they’ve had two seasons (2022-23 and 2024-25) where they entered the season highly-rated but fell short. Even in their “down” years, however, they’ve had seven consecutive winning seasons in the Atlantic 10 and have won 21 or more games in each of the last six complete seasons.
This year, they’re not going to enter the season as one of the top-ranked teams, but Dayton still might be the best team in the A-10 and they’re likely in the conversation for an at-large bid even if they don’t win the league. They return about a third of last season’s minutes, but also added five D1 transfers—including two highly productive players from mid-major programs from last season and three players who spent the year with power conference teams. They’re expected to be very good on defense and their slow pace brings down the possession count and raises the possibility that they’ll swing the game with a timely three. Senior guard Javon Bennett was really good at that a year ago, making 39% of them (the NCAA average was 31.6%). He’s on the A-10’s preseason all-conference first team, and seven-footer Amael L’Etang is on the second team.
1. Maryland at Marquette on November 15
This season the best matchup iplayed in Milwaukee during non-conference play might have a better storyline off the court than on it: First-year Maryland head coach Buzz Williams will visit Marquette for the first time since his final game as coach there in the spring of 2014. Williams has split the last 11 seasons between Virginia Tech and Texas A&M, where his teams have appeared in six NCAA Tournaments, been a 4-seed two times, and reached a Sweet 16. Buzz has racked up 373 career wins across 19 seasons at the D1 level.
Williams is the fourth coach in six seasons at Maryland, where things have been turbulent. The Terrapins have only posted a winning record in Big Ten play in two of the last five seasons, but one of them was last year when they were a 4-seed in the NCAAs and reached the Sweet 16. It’s tough to stay atop the Big Ten, where six teams will open the season in the Associated Press top 25 and six others received votes. Maryland is not among either group. They’re one of two Big Ten teams (Iowa is the other) returning less than 1% of last season’s minutes.
What they do have is a total of seven D1 transfers, including two players that came with Williams from Texas A&M. Wing Pharrel Payne is a solid rebounder, shot blocker, and interior scorer. Another wing, Solomon Washington, was also strong on the offensive glass last year. Despite all of their roster fluctuation, the Terrapins are still expected to be one of the game’s best defensive teams. This game will be one of their biggest early tests in a tough non-conference schedule, as they also go to Virginia and see Gonzaga on a neutral floor.