Green Bay Basketball: Set up to fail

The Green Bay Phoenix men’s basketball team suffered their fourth straight loss Wednesday, this time at the hands of IU Indianapolis in the Horizon League opener by a score of 84 to 75.

This comes after a promising start to the season that saw the Phoenix win games over Western Illinois and SIUE.

It seemed like things were going to be alright in Green Bay, but after suffering back-to-back road defeats to Evansville and Ohio State, there was a lot to work on.

The Phoenix are in year one of the Doug Gottlieb era after former head coach Sundance Wicks left for Wyoming.

Gottlieb is also a sports media personality who plans to continue his show while coaching the Phoenix.

The entire experiment seems as if it was doomed to fail from the start, as being the head coach of a college basketball team is a full-time job, let alone a Division I head coach.

Green Bay hasn’t had consistent success in men’s basketball since the years of 2011 to 2017, and yet the problem remains as they try to rebuild their program.

The problem with the mid-majors is that once a player or coach gets too good, they leave for a bigger school with a bigger paycheck now that NIL is involved.

When Wicks left for Wyoming, the Phoenix lost three of their top four scorers while they still had eligibility remaining.

The transfer portal and 2024 recruiting class provided some reassurance for Green Bay, and one player in particular who has starred so far is guard Anthony Roy.

Roy, a senior and transfer from NAIA Langston University, has averaged 28 points per game and has been 45-for-100 in three-point attempts this season.

Watching the Ohio State game, however, it seemed like the Phoenix played scared and was constantly looking for a three-point shot.

Because of this, Green Bay could not get ‘easy buckets’ inside the paint, and they lost the height battle as their shots were blocked four times.

Overall this season, the Phoenix has attempted 269 three-point shots, the second most in the Horizon League, and they have knocked down 92 of them.

The contrast between this season and the 2023-24 season seems to be miles apart.

Last year, Green Bay had double-digit wins in a season for the first time since the 2019-20 campaign.

From 2020-21 to 2022-23, the Phoenix went a combined 16-71 overall and did not make it out of the first round of the Horizon League Tournament once.

Seeing how Green Bay went from a team on the rise to a joke of a program led by a sports analyst in the span of a year is concerning.

Playing for wins, not media exposure should be the focus of this team if they want to start fresh and turn into a Horizon League power again.

Bryan Portney is a first-year studying broadcast journalism. To contact him, email bep5295@psu.edu.