UWM men's basketball moving back to Klotsche Center

milwvu04 · June 26, 2012, 04:20:06 PM

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/160435095.html

vu72 · June 26, 2012, 07:12:45 PM

Only 3400 seats? What would Butler think about such a "high school gym"!

Actually I think it is a smart move. It surprises me that a school with all those thousands of students can't get a better turnout, but, for the most part, games played at the Cell were pretty empty. I suppose if and when Milwaukee wins a Basketball championship again that they can find a bigger venue in which to host.

vuweathernerd · June 26, 2012, 10:13:47 PM

hopefully they can manage to fill that place better than they filled the cell.

LaPorteAveApostle · June 27, 2012, 09:39:47 AM

While I love me some snark, I have to point out in cross-reference IndyValpo's post:
http://www.valpofanzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=867.msg15831#msg15831

At this rate, their average attendance is more than 20% the capacity of the place they are moving...tell me Geiger doesn't have something planned.

dylanrocks · June 28, 2012, 01:33:00 PM

Agreed, I think he has something planned.

blackpantheruwm · June 30, 2012, 07:42:57 PM

Geiger's interview with 1250 WSSP on Wednesday confirmed that he's got stuff planned.

- Immediate plans to build a brand new basketball practice facility.
- Convocation Center on campus to house games for basketball.
- Practice bubble/fieldhouse for track and field, soccer, and baseball.
- Baseball stadium as close to campus as possible.

covufan · July 02, 2012, 12:44:42 PM

Quote from: blackpantheruwm on June 30, 2012, 07:42:57 PM
Geiger's interview with 1250 WSSP on Wednesday confirmed that he's got stuff planned.

- Immediate plans to build a brand new basketball practice facility.
- Convocation Center on campus to house games for basketball.
- Practice bubble/fieldhouse for track and field, soccer, and baseball.
- Baseball stadium as close to campus as possible.

With a location in Milwaukee, Geiger's vision, 25k undergraduates, this school could be ready for some big changes. If the Wisconsin legislature would allow them to have football (Div I-AA), they could really be a player in that arena soon.

VULB#62 · July 02, 2012, 08:47:32 PM

Still don't understand why they are going back to an undersized campus facility when an on campus convocation center is still a concept and not real. Packed house with 20% fewer people vs. seemingly semi-empty arena with actually 20% more people?

Regarding the rest of their program growth initiatives. My daughter's college, Middlebury (D-III), went with a bubble for a large number of years as a transitory step to a bricks and mortar field house. Worked fine. Now they are building the B&M version to the tune of $46 million (or..... about 44 bubbles after the practice surface/track surface was built). But, hey, it now includes some squash courts too. Enrollment is 1/10 of UWM. It's like driving down a street in a place like Jupiter Island, FL and wondering how do these people get all that money?

But, realistically, if UWM brought Geiger in to amp up the athletic program, they have the potential to kick butt -- even without FCS football. And if they went FCS football that would crimp Valpo's WI recruiting base a bit too.

blackpantheruwm · July 07, 2012, 05:34:53 PM

As far as football is concerned...over 200 D-I players from Wisconsin play in FBS and FCS every year, and the Badgers only carry about 40 in any given year.

No other scholarship or D-I opportunity in-state. We'd kill at football. We'd also

up Bucky's walk-on program, which I'm totally fine with.

vu72 · July 07, 2012, 07:24:50 PM

Quote from: blackpantheruwm on July 07, 2012, 05:34:53 PM
As far as football is concerned...over 200 D-I players from Wisconsin play in FBS and FCS every year, and the Badgers only carry about 40 in any given year.

No other scholarship or D-I opportunity in-state. We'd kill at football. We'd also up Bucky's walk-on program, which I'm totally fine with.

Yeah, we have four on our roster with another coming on as a freshman this fall!

blackpantheruwm · July 08, 2012, 11:11:16 AM

Quote from: vu72 on July 07, 2012, 07:24:50 PM
Quote from: blackpantheruwm on July 07, 2012, 05:34:53 PM
As far as football is concerned...over 200 D-I players from Wisconsin play in FBS and FCS every year, and the Badgers only carry about 40 in any given year.

No other scholarship or D-I opportunity in-state. We'd kill at football. We'd also up Bucky's walk-on program, which I'm totally fine with.

Yeah, we have four on our roster with another coming on as a freshman this fall!

I'm looking right now, if there's a weekend where one of our soccer teams is playing at Valpo on the same day Valpo has a home football game, I'm coming down.

blackpantheruwm · July 08, 2012, 11:13:09 AM

No dice. Women play at Valpo on the Wednesday before Butler-Valpo. Hell, I might come down for that football game anyways.

VULB#62 · July 08, 2012, 06:42:54 PM

Hey Panther, where can they fit all the stuff Geiger is envisioning? I've been around the UWM campus and there just is no real estate near the core campus unless they knock down some of the academic buildings. But, hey, if you need to market the brand................................

blackpantheruwm · July 09, 2012, 05:53:03 PM

Quote from: VULB#62 on July 08, 2012, 06:42:54 PM
Hey Panther, where can they fit all the stuff Geiger is envisioning? I've been around the UWM campus and there just is no real estate near the core campus unless they knock down some of the academic buildings. But, hey, if you need to market the brand................................

Well, the baseball stadium most definitely isn't coming back to campus. From everything Geiger has said, it sounds like the old George Koonce plan (his first, not second) of building a track/baseball indoor practice facility next to a new baseball stadium at Lincoln Park is going to come to fruition. I hope that at least PART of Koonce's second plan comes in to play - soliciting Bud Selig and MLB to foot the bill. MLB has had a program to bring baseball to inner city kids called RBI that is really ambitious, and Koonce hoped that with money kicked in from the school and MLB, that money together would build the most expensive stadium in the country. He had stars in his eyes, but getting money from MLB in a joint venture would definitely bring a better facility than we'd be able to build.

I can say that the Panthers aren't going to build a stadium until the practice facility and new basketball arena are finished, unless they can do it concurrently. See, coaches of other non-revenue sports at UWM - specifically soccer - understand that basketball is the bell cow. Baseball, for some reason, hasn't understood that to the same extent. The soccer coaches - specifically Mike Moynihan and David Nikolic of women's soccer - realized how important fundraising was, and they raised millions for women's soccer alone during their tenure. If baseball were to figure it out, that would be a big boon.

As it stands, I'm in contact with a lot of donors, boosters, fans, whatever you want to call them. Through PantherU and being such a public figure in the fan base, my ear gets a lot of information and that's even with the Koonce administration trying to actively suppress employees from telling me anything - it still gets to me through the grapevine...or, 50 grapevines. Sorry for going off on a tangent, but the reason I brought it up is that many of the bigger donors in the program have told me that they're not interested in putting significant money into a sport that will rarely, if ever, succeed at any school in the north. I'd say that a significant amount of UWM's top 25 athletics donors are far more interested in bringing football back, and once the basketball arena is finished they're hoping a football stadium isn't long behind.

Of course, I hope they're right - I want football more than anyone - but the point to be taken out of this is that if we're going to build something significant for baseball, it's not going to come from established donor money. It's going to have to come from outside sources.