News - Local/State

Friday, Sep. 05, 2008

Winthrop releases 2008-09 basketball schedule

You’d think a basketball coach who lost three starters and has a roster that includes 11 players who are either freshmen or sophomores, plus a first-year junior college transfer, might take the easy road in scheduling.

So, what was Winthrop’s Randy Peele thinking?

“Do I think I’m nuts?” he said Friday. “Pretty much.”

But this year’s non-conference schedule is the kind Peele loves — a sort of take on all comers slate he hopes will toughen his Eagles for the Big South Conference race.

“Part of my mentality is I’m not afraid to put myself out there,” Peele said. “I’m not afraid to be a head coach who will take on anybody who wants to play.”

The Eagles will play 29 games, and in the first two months of the season will be on the road for eight of their first 11 games, including a brutal four-game stretch from Nov. 16-25 that sees the Eagles visit South Carolina, Akron, Davidson and North Carolina State.

A hang up with the South Carolina game — which almost forced a cancellation — kept Peele busy most of the past month. After originally scheduling the game for Dec. 30, they had to take a second look when a conflict arose with South Carolina’s schedule. After briefly considering Dec. 18, the teams settled for Nov. 16, two days after the Eagles open the season at home against North Greenville. It’s a one-year deal with the Gamecocks.

Akron finished 24-11 last year and reached the second round of the NIT, and everyone knows what Davidson did, finishing 29-7, coming within a missed 3-pointer of going to the Final Four and beating Winthrop 60-47 in the ESPNU BracketBuster series.

The Eagles will close 2008 with two-time national champion Florida on Dec. 28 in the Orange Bowl Classic. The Gators were 24-12 last year and reached the NIT semifinals.

The Eagles also travel to Old Dominion (18-16), which played in the inaugural CBI Tournament, and Charlotte (20-14), which lost in the first round of the NIT.

At home, the Eagles face East Carolina (11-19) and College of Charleston (16-17).

The Eagles’ non-conference opponents compiled a 178-150 record last year.

For the fourth straight year, Winthrop will also play in the ESPNU BracketBuster series on Feb. 20-21. The Eagles will host a game, perhaps on national television, against an opponent to be named Feb. 2.

Getting South Carolina, Charlotte, Davidson and College of Charleston on the schedule was a goal Peele set when he got the job. The Charlotte and Charleston games are multi-year deals. Davidson is a return game from last year’s BracketBuster matchup.

While Peele joked about putting together such a difficult non-conference slate, he didn’t have a lot of wiggle room. Akron, East Carolina and Old Dominion were return games. And he needed several guarantee games to bolster to the program’s financial situation. He’ll get close to $200,000 for those road trips to South Carolina, N.C. State and Florida.

“If I could have changed on thing,” Peele said, “I might have started the Charlotte series a year later.”

And after finding out on Friday that 6-9 center Andy Buechert is lost for the season with a torn ACL, Peele said, had he known sooner, “the schedule probably wouldn’t look like this.”

“But the thing is,” he added, “if your program is going to move forward, this is the kind of schedule you have to play.”

As always, the Big South Conference race will be the focus. They’ve won four straight and eight of the past 10 league titles and the accompanying NCAA Tournament berths. No Big South team has ever won five in a row.

They beat UNC Asheville on the Bulldogs’ home court in the tournament finals last year, after the two tied for the regular season crown. The Eagles lost 71-40 to Washington State in the NCAA Tournament and finished 22-12 in Peele’s first season.

With the Big South adding Presbyterian and Gardner-Webb this season, league play will begin in early December. The Eagles open at VMI on Dec. 3 and visit Radford, which could be the preseason pick to win the title, two days later.

The Eagles, who will likely be picked in the middle of the pack after losing Chris Gaynor, Michael Jenkins, Taj McCullough and Buechert, will play an 18-game league schedule. All games will count, even though Presbyterian, which is still making the transition to NCAA Division I status, will not be eligible for post-season play. Gardner-Webb, which moves over from the Atlantic Sun Conference, will be eligible for the regular season and tournament titles and the league’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid.

This year’s schedule is similar to the 2006-07 slate that saw the Eagles go 29-5 while play North Carolina, Mississippi State, Wisconsin, Maryland, Old Dominion and Texas A&M on the road. But that schedule also included four non-Division I opponents. This year, only North Greenville is non-DI. “In 2007,” Peele said, “we had an experienced team with Craig Bradshaw and Torrell Martin. We had to think our chances were pretty good.

“The difference this year is the difficulty of the schedule does not match the level of experience that’s returning.

“It’s tough. It’s challenging, but we aren’t running from it.”