The Green Bay Phoenix ended last season with a 4-28 record. They lived in the basement. They rebuilt in the dark.
Early December brought a chance to match last season’s win total, and they walked straight into the moment. Up 11 with 3:03 left, Marcus Hall stepped to the line and calmly made two free throws to push it to 76-65. The fifth win was sitting right there.
Then everything fell apart.
“I’m encouraged by our effort and our defense and how we executed and that was just embarrassing how we lost the game,” head coach Doug Gottlieb said. “You lost the game you probably should have won.”
He did not hesitate to say the part most coaches avoid.
“We are actually a good basketball team. I know it is surprising to people. We are actually pretty good, but we played like idiots at the end of the game.”
That line landed with the full weight of what collapsed in the final minutes.
Doug Gottlieb tosses a chair after Green Bay loses to Robert Morris. Pic.twitter.com/eAiVt2mOlU
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 5, 2025
Robert Morris kept hitting the shots that mattered while Green Bay stopped guarding the only thing that could beat them.
Gottlieb’s frustration centered on the execution that disappeared.
“We have great free throw shooters and Marcus (Hall) misses one, Justin misses one, CJ (O’Hara) misses one, Rudy (Preston Ruedinger) misses one. That is four points,” he said. “And then all of a sudden we lose our mind in who we are guarding. The only thing that beats you there is the 3-point shot and we did not defend the 3-point shot.”
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One defensive mistake stayed with him. “I do not know if Marcus did not hear or what but he went and left his man when he is supposed to stay down there,” he said. “When your best players make errors that is what is going to happen.”
The emotion never dropped. “Unbelievably frustrating. Like unbelievably frustrating. You do everything. You prepare them. They have the game and they just have to bring it home and we just did not.”
And then the moment that captured all of it. As Gottlieb walked off the floor and into the tunnel, he tossed a chair, a burst of rage that told the story of the night as clearly as anything he said.
It was the physical release of a coach watching a sure win dissolve in minutes.
“We have to get stops when it counts. We have to defend the 3-point line when it counts,” he said.
Until they do, this rebuild will hurt.
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