Published: Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009 / Updated: Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009 07:28 AM

Winthrop men's basketball team struggles on both ends of the floor in loss to Gardner-Webb

Eagles struggle on both ends of the floor

Gardner-Webb coach Rick Scruggs didn't make the mistake other coaches have made against Winthrop this season.

He watched the tapes, knew the Eagles haven't been very good against the zone defense. So, after he watched Andre Jones drive the lane for a layup on the first possession and score off turnover on the second against his man-to-man, Scruggs had seen enough.

He might have played a couple more possessions of man, but for most of the night, the Bulldogs went zone and the Eagles' offense zoned out. Gardner-Webb closed the first half with a 15-0 run and went on to thump the Eagles, 64-49.

The loss was the worst at home for Winthrop since dropping an 82-60 decision to Radford during the 1997-1998 season. The Eagles, losing for the fourth time at home this season, dropped to 2-4 in the Big South, 3-12 overall. The 12 losses equal last year's number with at 15 games to play.

"We've been about 50-50 man to man and zone," Scruggs said, "but that's the most zone we've played. We saw that they'd struggled against zone and we made slight changes that helped."

The Eagles shot 35 percent and missed 14 of their 15 3-point attempts. They spent too much time standing on the offensive end and didn't get to the boards. The Bulldogs pounded the Eagles on the glass 44-31, including 14 offensive boards.

In fact, the Bulldogs (3-3, 7-9) seemed to get every loose ball, every contested rebound, every hustle play that mattered.

Once they fell behind 16 at the half, the Eagles didn't put together any kind of run that could get them back into the game.

"They are a well-oiled machine offensively," Winthrop coach Randy Peele said. "They spread you out, play off the pass and share the basketball. In the first half, I felt like if the ball didn't go in it was because they just missed not because we stopped them.

"We had to be great defensively to win that game."

The Eagles weren't even close.

The Bulldogs won despite leading scorer Grayson Flittner being held to 10 points, eight under his average. But nine of the 10 Bulldogs who played scored, led by Aaron Linn's 13. Five others had at least six points as the Eagles had trouble stopping anyone in a black jersey.

Joshua Henley, Auryn MacMillan, Jonathan Moore and Nate Blank had eight each.

"When we've played well this year, we've kind of fed off Grayson making shots," Scruggs said. "It was good to see other guys step up."

The Eagles came undone in the final 3:28 of the first half.

Trailing 20-13, Charles Corbin scored eight of Winthrop's next 10 points, and the Eagles cut the lead to 24-23 with five minutes left in the half.

They were down 26-23 at a timeout with 3:28 left. Coming out of the timeout, the gave up an uncontested 3-pointer from the corner by Blank off the inbounds pass.

Flittner followed with another 3-pointer, his first field goal of the half.

The Bulldogs scored on six straight possessions, and the buckets came easily against the Eagles, who seemed to suddenly forget that defense is a part of the game.

"At the end of the half, we kind of smelled blood and really got aggressive as a team," Linn said.

The Bulldogs shot 57 percent for the half and pounded the bigger Eagles on the glass, 20-10. They also blocked four shots.

"The way we play," Scruggs said, "there are usually a lot of runs in games. The key in the first half was ours came at the end of the half, and they didn't have a chance to answer it."

The Eagles had no answer in the second half, either.

Linn made a 3-pointer to put the Bulldogs up 51-31 with 12:46 left. Counting the scoreless last five minutes of the first half, the Eagles managed to put up just six points against the zone over a 12-minute stretch. There was plenty of passing on the perimeter, but not much attacking the gaps or probing the zone inside. The result was usually a deep 3-pointer or a forced shot inside the arc.

Not scoring, Peele said, affected the defense.

"When we struggle to score, on defense we have a tendency to relax," Peele said. "And if we can't stop you, "it's hard for us to win the game on our ability to outscore you."

Mantoris Robinson had a season-high 16 points, his first double-figure game since getting 14 against East Carolina on Nov. 29. Corbin added 14. Corbin and Robinson combined to make 14-of-22 shots; the rest of the Eagles were a miserable 7-for-38.

The 1-for-15 from the 3-point line was the season-low. In the past two games, the Eagles are 4-for-27 from behind the arc.

Peele was as perplexed as anyone in trying to figure out why his team struggles so mightily to get the ball through the iron.

"It's not about adding another offense," he said. "It's being proficient at what we have and develop our skills. We work on them every day, and that's all we can do, continue to work at it."