Hopefully the Brewers will take a lesson from the Bucks.

The Bucks also stumbled from the gates to start the season, taking grand expectations and flushing them directly into the Bradley Center's locker room toilets with a 3-9 opening. Their coach ranted and raved -- not really Davey Lopes‚ style -- and before you knew it, they were the hottest team in basketball.

Amazing thing is, they still are. For a moment, the wayward Charlotte Hornets seemed to threaten the Bucks' first division title since the Reagan years with a hot stretch of hoops in mid-March. Coupled with a Bucks' finishing stretch akin to Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon, nervous throat clearing started to get louder on the corner of Fourth and State.

But, alas, the Hornets cooled (I will not say "lost their sting") and the Bucks actually heated up. Most Milwaukee teams -- yeah, the Brewers included -- go west to die, but this Bucks team has performed like a cowboy ringer at a weekend dude ranch on the current six-game road trip. First they off'ed San Antonio by 9 on the road, an impressive win in light of the Spurs being the best team in basketball (Duke?). A valiant loss the next night in Phoenix without Sam Cassell or Glenn Robinson was nearly as impressive, as well as providing further proof that Tim Thomas would have All-Star numbers were he among the team's top two options. A win over Sacramento followed, despite blowing a 24-point lead and trailing by five in the fourth quarter, and at the time the Kings had the best home record in all the land (now the Spurs do).

The team followed the script for a change and blew out an overmatched Golden State Wednesday, and now only the coltish L.A. Clippers and George Karl's erstwhile Seattle SuperSonics remain as the Central Division title beckons. I guess it just goes to show what a little confidence and Sam Cassell can do.

Increasingly, Cassell seems to be the true heartbeat of the team. Rafer Alston has done a solid job when Cassell has been unavailable (be it due to his hip flexor or foul trouble), but he clearly isn't up to running a playoff team. Cassell -- who won two titles with Houston in his first two NBA seasons -- gives Milwaukee something that is simply impossible to replicate: championship experience. That experience is accompanied with a lot of ref-baiting and a bit too much swagger at times, but the first one undoubtedly leads to the second two.

Cassell scored a career-high 40 points and added 10 assists as the team survived Chicago in double-OT on March 3. Beyond the glittering numbers, Cassell also extended the game into a second extra session by grabbing a last-second rebound of a Glenn Robinson miss (after a subtle push into the back of a Bulls defender), turning and running out to the 3-point line, and lofting up a turnaround, tying trey-piece as time expired. The horn resounding in the Bulls ears mimicked the clock striking midnight, and the shot prevented the Bucks from extending their losing streak to three at the hands of the league's worst team.

Cassell is also many things: a passer (7.6 assists), a post-up scorer (smaller defensively-challenged guards have no chance), a leader ("We can play the style of basketball they play in the West, or we can play with the East," Cassell said recently. "We're not intimidated by the West, and we're not intimidated by anybody in the East."), and a referee's gadfly (even Bucks fans get quasi-annoyed with his entreaties to officials after nearly every whistle). The Bucks are just one thing without him: playoff roadkill.

And it might have been Cassell who officially began the Bucks' resurgence in November. Back on Nov. 28, Sam first grabbed Anthony Mason's arm to win a jump ball with 5.3 seconds remaining and then hit a game-winning 3 with 0.9 left as Milwaukee completed a 22-point comeback in the fourth quarter to beat the Heat, 102-101. Questioned on the legality of the jump ball tactic that helped the Bucks improve to 5-9, Cassell had this to say: "We were down in the trenches. It's a game we had to have and we got it."

Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson and Tim Thomas are all great players, but arm-grabbers and back-pushers? They're not yet equal to Sam Cassell in those categories -- and those things are important. Cassell has the jewelry to prove it.