UW-Milwaukee basketball knows Loyola well, having defeated the Ramblers convincingly in December

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee men's basketball team enjoyed one of its finest performances of the year Dec. 16 when it notched a 73-56 win over Loyola in a nonconference battle at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.

It's a win that looks really good now.

Loyola may have been missing two of its top players that night, but the Panthers victory sticks out now that Loyola has enjoyed a magical run to the Final Four.

"It was a game for us that we had to come out and play extremely hard and make amends for how we played at Belmont, when didn’t play as well," Baldwin said this week, referring to an 82-63 loss three days earlier, a game that came on the heels of another blowout loss against Western Illinois. "We were without one of our guys (Brock Stull) at Belmont, so we knew we had to come and play a lot better, and we were really focused on getting back to some fundamental things."

Stull returned with a flourish against Loyola, hitting four three-pointers and finishing with 23 points.

Of note, Loyola was missing Clayton Custer and Ben Richardson, two players who have seen their profile explode during the NCAA Tournament. Richardson was named the Most Valuable Player in the region after scoring a career-best 23 points in an Elite Eight win over Kansas State on March 24, and Custer was on the All-Region team.

Richardson was also the Defensive Player of the Year in the Missouri Valley Conference, averaging only 6.4 points per game this year. Custer, Loyola's point guard, hit the game-winning shot with 3.6 seconds left against Tennessee in the second round. Even without those two, Baldwin knew the Ramblers were dangerous.

"When you see them beat a team like Florida that had a lot of talent and done some great things, even teams like UIC and Wright State in our league, which are pretty good ... you know they're a great team," Baldwin said. "You know they have a very good coach and are meticulous. He probably gets his team as prepared as anyone in the country. Coaching under Rick Majerus and also having been a head coach (at Arkansas-Little Rock and Illinois State), he knows what he’s doing, and they have very good players. We knew we had to really prepare for them."

Baldwin's connections to Loyola run deeper than a December encounter. He spent seven seasons on the Ramblers bench, rising to the level of associate head coach before departing in 2011 when head coach Jim Whitesell was fired.

"It’s fun for me," Baldwin said of watching the Ramblers now. "Loyola holds a special place in my heart, a place where (I was coaching when) two of my kids were born.

His daughter, Brooke, was born in 2007 on the same night that Loyola kicked off the season with its "Midnight Madness" practice. Daughter Claire was born in the summer of 2010.

"There are great people there, a lot of support administration that's still there (when I was there), and it holds great memories," Baldwin said. "Sister Jean was there when I was there. She does the same thing now that she did then. She prayed for our team, prayed for our success, shouted out scouting reports to our head coach at the time. She's extremely sharp and cares about the success of the program."