We're about an hour from the start of the men's basketball season at UWM, as the Panthers will face MSOE in an exhibition game tonight at the U.S. Cellular Arena.
There aren't a ton of notes to pass along that weren't already in the game notes, which you can find on the main site here.
You can list to a pregame podcast with UWM head coach Rob Jeter here. We'll be doing these regularly and posting them on the main site throughout the season. We'll actually do pre and postgame audio and other interviews for both the men and the women.
I did include a little info in the notes but it bears repeating here, because it seems the most popular preseason question always revolves around who will redshirt. True freshman can play in exhibition games and still redshirt. But, anyone else cannot play in an exhibition game if they intend to redshirt. So, that generally means you wind up seeing just about everyone make an appearance in an exhibition game. In UWM's case, there will likely be a few players redshirt this season. Some of those decisions could become more obvious tonight, and some will undoubtedly take another week to come to.
One thing that didn't make the notes involves the number of connections there are between MSOE and UWM. MSOE AD Dan Harris is actually in the UWM Athletics Hall of Fame, while MSOE Head Athletic Trainer Dave Beine just left UWM this summer to take the job with the Raiders. Also, MSOE head coach Brian Miller is a UWM grad, as is head soccer coach Jimmy Banks. Plus, the baseball staff includes former UWM standouts Troy Doering (head coach), Steve Sanfilippo (ass't coach) and Rick Caviani (ass't coach). And I am sure that is not even a complete list.
Finally, I did get word from Iowa State just a little bit ago that the UWM game next Saturday against Cal Davis has been set for 3 p.m. That game has been listed as a TBA because of Iowa State's football game that day with Missouri. Well, everything has now been set and the Panthers will play right after Iowa State and Loyola Marymount play at 12:30.
We won't do a live in-game blog tonight, but we do plan to do them throughout the course of the season, and may give it a test run during this weekend's women's soccer championship down in Chicago.
