For the Wisconsin-Green Bay Phoenix, Wednesday’s noon matchup with the Michigan Tech Huskies men’s basketball team was going to be a problem no matter how it went.

The Huskies entered the game riding a five-game winning streak that included a win over then-No. 3 Minnesota State-Moorhead to kick off the recent hot streak. In their previous game against Div. III Northland College, the Huskies had six players in double figures. In fact, over their last three games, they had five or more players in double figures in each of them.

Oh, and they had beaten the Lumberjacks by 63 points, without junior guard Marcus Tomashek, who averages 24.1 points per game, on the floor.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix came into Wednesday’s matchup 2-10 on the year, having lost seven in a row, and without leading scorer Anthony Roy.

For Tomashek, the game, at the Resch Center, was in his backyard. He played his high school ball at Ashwaubenon. For Huskies junior forward Dawson Nordgaard and freshman guard Ethan Heck, it was a game just up the road from their high school of West DePere.

The game itself was also interesting in the fact that, for Michigan Tech, it was an exhibition, so they had absolutely nothing to lose, and for the Phoenix, it was a game that would count in their standings, so they had everything to lose by playing it.

Then Phoenix coach Doug Gottlieb, after an 88-67 loss to Milwaukee on Dec. 11, made some regrettable remarks about playing Michigan Tech.

“I don’t really like the idea of ‘Nobody U’ coming in here,” he said. “What do we learn playing a game where we win by 20?”

As it turned out, his team had plenty to learn about playing ‘NobodyU’. The Huskies scored 49 points in the second half on Wednesday to earn a 72-70 win.

Tomashek led the way with 30 points. Nordgaard added 10. Freshman guard Ty Fernholz hit three 3-pointers.

The Huskies shot just 26.67% in the first half, then 57.14% in the second. They were also 50% from beyond the arc in the second half alone.

The bench put up 25 points, including those nine from Fernholz. The Huskies scored 15 points off turnovers. But the biggest place where the Huskies controlled play, the fast break. The Huskies managed 20 points off the fast break, to just eight by the Phoenix.

“That was great,” said Tomashek after the game. “Come here, beat a DI. We all knew we could beat them. It was such a fun game. That’s why we play basketball.

“It feels good beating this team.”

Buettner felt good before the game against Northland that he could keep Tomashek on the sidelines for that game, giving him a chance to rest his body, after a tough opening weekend to GLIAC play with games against Wisconsin-Parkside and Purdue Northwest, where he scored 12 and 15 points, respectively, However, he figured that it would be more difficult to keep him out of the game Wednesday.

Gottlieb, after the game, had to answer for his pregame comments.

“I know how it looks,” he said. “Michigan Tech, it’s a school from the U.P. that no one has ever heard of. It’s a great engineering school. I understand.”

He then said the more important thing while also acknowledging how solid of a player Tomashek is.

“We knew they were a really good basketball team,” he said. “Marcus Tomashek is a hell of a player.”

Later in that same press conference, Gottlieb admitted that he still has a ways to go.

“This is first years,” he said. “I am learning a lot. The hardest thing to teach in coaching is how to win, and I clearly have not done a good enough job.”

For this Huskies team, learning how to win has been a process that has taken years to perfect. Buettner, who took over the program in 2021, has been working with his juniors and seniors to get them to this point.

“I mean, that’s huge,” he said in an interview recently. “I mean, we’ve shown signs over the last two years of being playing at a high level. We played with good teams. We’ve beaten some good teams. We’re just trying to set the kind of the floor, the standard in terms of the level we compete with, how we share the ball, and how hard we play.”

If no one was paying attention to the Huskies men before, they should be now. The Huskies return to action with three straight games on the road in seven days in early January.