Posted: Jan. 9, 2010 10:40 p. m.
Depending on your point of view, it was the best of times or the worst of times Saturday afternoon at the U. S. Cellular Arena, where the UW-Milwaukee Panthers were superb in a 71-51 victory over UW-Green Bay in a physical Horizon League matchup.
For Green Bay, it will go down as its worst performance of the season so far.
The Panthers (10-7, 2-3) jumped on Green Bay (11-6, 4-2) early, taking a 17-4 lead 6 minutes into the game, then held off determined Phoenix comebacks in both halves to emerge with their second straight victory.
Panthers coach Rob Jeter saw a lot of good things.
"I guess I"m just excited for this group because they"ve really battled all year," said Jeter. "And we just seemed to never really make it over the hump or had that one game that could really bring some life into people and life into us and life into all our fans and everyone who sticks with us.
"I think this game here definitely put a lot of life into everybody. I"m just excited for a lot of reasons, but it"s just good to see the excitement back here in the Cell, and our guys played well in front of our fans. "
It was quite a different story from the other locker room.
"Obviously, anybody that"s played or coached at a high level or at a relatively high level has had their rear ends kicked," said Green Bay coach Tod Kowalczyk. "And tonight we got our rear ends kicked. We didn"t play well. I don"t think we competed. I don"t think we played with our Green Bay passion or team grit because we got exposed. It was clearly our worst performance of the year. "
Forward James Eayrs turned in a big game, leading the Panthers with 15 points and 13 rebounds.

Guards Bryquis Perine and Troy Cotton led Green Bay with 15 and 14 points respectively.
It was an intense game that included a couple of brief scuffles, one in the first half that resulted in technical fouls against Franklin and Green Bay"s Randy Berry.
"There were a lot of tussles out there," said Eayrs. "It was a physical game. We knew it was going to be a physical game, with them being our rivals. I thought we played well and kept our composure. "
The Panthers got off to a great start, scoring 14 straight points to take a 17-4 lead. Ajami sank a pair of three-pointers during that stretch, taking a nice pass from Anthony Hill in the low post on the second one.
"We played well to start with," said Kowalczyk. "And then they made some shots and I don"t think we responded. That put us...
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