The UW-Milwaukee baseball team may have lost the game, but the program won something bigger over the last two weeks.
The Panthers’ magical run in the NCAA Tournament ended as the clock ticked toward midnight Monday with an 8-3 loss to No. 4 overall seed Auburn in the regional championship game. Every team but one ends its season with a loss, and so did UWM’s. But not every team can feel as good about what transpired toward the end of its season.
After starting its season with a 5-23 record, the Panthers then went 22-9 before Monday’s loss. A walk-off home run gave UWM a Horizon League title and sent the team into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 16 years. An offensive explosion on Friday gave the Panthers its first NCAA Tournament victory since 1999, and another eruption on Saturday gave UWM its first two-victory tournament ever.
The city of Milwaukee, the state of Wisconsin and alumni around the country responded with a tidal wave of support and interest. Social media was peppered with enthusiasm for UWM. News media covered the teams’ success. Alumni found a new level of pride in their university.
Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy showed the love, wearing a UWM baseball cap to his postgame news conference Monday night.
All through the weekend, ESPN commenters praised UWM for its talent and toughness, and raved about its future.
“This Milwaukee team brought a lot of life, and brought a lot of national attention to themselves,” ESPN announcer Gregg Olson said after Monday’s game. “It was just so much fun to watch, and it was hard to root not to root for them.”
Monday’s game was tight much of the way. Auburn pushed across single runs in the first and third innings. Then UWM first baseman John Hadley VI tied the game in the fourth, jumping on a hanging slider off Auburn ace Jake Marciano and crushing his eighth home run of the year over the 385-foot sign on the center field wall.
But then Auburn sent 10 batters to the plate in the sixth inning, scoring five runs and blowing the game open.
The Panthers couldn’t recover. But even in the gloom of an Alabama night, the future looked bright.
“We appreciate the support, we feel the support, as an alum, that makes me feel so proud,” head coach Shaun Wegner said before Monday’s game. “But now we’re getting a little more out there on the national stage.”
UWM is the only Division 1 college baseball program in Wisconsin. UW-Madison dropped its Division 1 program amid budget problems in 1991.
“We want to be known as Wisconsin’s baseball team,” Wegner said recently in an interview with ESPN Madison.
Over a couple of months of spring 2026, the program took several large strides toward that goal.
