Milwaukee Bucks Win a Pair on the Road

By JB | Posted Monday, January 23

It looks like we have a Milwaukee Bucks squad that went straight to the bottom of the standings early in the season suddenly surging. Milwaukee notched their first back-to-back wins of the season, and their first two road victories. These weren’t lowly teams that they took care of. The wins came against some big names in the NBA, which makes it all that more impressive. The two wins leave the Wizards as the only team in the league without success on the road.

After eight straight road losses, the Bucks finally managed to pull one down against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden last Friday. Milwaukee (who won by nearly twenty points,) was playing with all weapons enabled for the first time this season. Stephen Jackson was the lone player on the Bucks roster who sat out the game. Jackson missed the morning bus to shoot around on Friday, and was punished with the single game absence.

Jackson Misses the Bucks Bus but Team Does Not Suffer

The fact that the team was without Jackson was not a problem for Scott Skiles. Mike Dunleavy Jr. returned to action after suffering a groin injury earlier in the season, and so did Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. He and Dunleavy contributed a combined seven points in thirty-seven minutes of play, but Brandon Jennings was the team's star in the win. Jennings (who has been fairly docile this year,) scored the most points of any Bucks player this season with thirty-six. Six three-pointers were the guard's highlight of the night, as well as fifteen-of-twenty-six from the field.

Milwaukee followed up their performance in New York the next night with a win in Miami. The Heat, playing without star Dwayne Wade, was held to under forty percent shooting on the night. The Bucks didn’t play very well on offense, and Jennings was just one-for-ten beyond the arc. What the Bucks did on the other side of the ball made all the difference. Defensively the team looked more comfortable than ever. The Bucks managed to contain Miami's two power players, LeBron James and Chris Bosh; not allowing them to make up for the loss of Wade. The other members of the Heat's roster were kept to nine-of-thirty-five from the field as they gave up the ball twenty-one times.