Published: Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 / Updated: Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 12:40 AM

Winthrop men's basketball team faces opponent with similar concerns

AKRON, Ohio -- After a win in his team's season-opener, the coach had this to say.

"I think this team will get better," he said. "Some nights, we will just have to grind it out. We just have to continue to coach them up and get better."

In a preseason assessment of his team he said:

"We will utilize our depth. We feel we have a lot of players who are the same."

His concerns?

Can the team score inside and rebound.

Winthrop's Randy Peele?

Yes and no.

Peele's said similar things about the Eagles, but in this case it was Keith Dambrot, coach of the Akron Zips (1-0), who host Peele's Eagles (1-1) at 7 tonight in Rhodes Arena, doing the explaining.

Peele has been talking about a roster that has 10 players who are freshmen or sophomores and how it's team that will only get better with a little work and some coaching.

Guess what?

Of Akron's 13 scholarship players, 10 are freshmen and sophomores.

But unlike Winthrop, which was picked to win the Big South Conference despite the new faces, the Zips, who finished 24-11 last year, were picked fifth in the East Division of the Mid-American Conference.

The Zips struggled to score in a 56-46 win over Canisius, and the Eagles have done the same in beating North Greenville and getting clocked 86-63 at South Carolina on Sunday.

Both teams, until those offensive woes are straightened out, will have to rely on defense. The Zips forced 30 turnovers and turned them into 27 points against Canisius, defense that offset 35 percent shooting and getting out rebounded by 20.

"I told you I was going to earn my money this year," Dambrot said after the Canisius game. "We couldn't throw it in the ocean. We grinded through."

The Zips lost their top three scorers from last year, and the most dependable veteran is 6-8 senior Nate Linhart. Linhart had nine points against the Eagles in a road loss last year. Winthrop came from 10 down in the final five minutes to win 68-58. Dambrot would probably like to draw on that experience, but he doesn't have that many players left who remember the game.

So, tonight's matchup will be two teams with similar problems and perhaps a similar solution -- play good defense and hope that's enough.

Peele has often called himself "a grinder" and his team, like Dambrot's, is going to have to take on that mentality.

Even in the waning stages of the loss at South Carolina, the Eagles, particularly those young players, were still going hard, one of the few things Peele could point to as a plus. But he knows if the effort's there, the other things can be fixed.

"I saw a team that never stopped fighting," Peele said. "I saw a lot of things with coaching we can fix."

A lot of the fixing has to begin on offense. While Peele has said he doesn't expect to have a dominant scorer and that several players could average between five and 10 points, the Eagles still have to find some consistency. They fell behind 19-0 at South Carolina when they couldn't get a decent shot and could run their offense.

The Eagles are averaging 65 points, but shooting 41 percent from the floor, 29 percent on the lengthened 3-pointer and 59 percent at the line. Peele has been worried about where the points might come from, and right now he's getting them from sophomore's Justin Burton (9.5), Charles Corbin (11.5) and Byron Faison (9.0) and junior college transfer Raymond Davis (9.5).

He had hoped to get more from 6-5 junior Mantoris Robinson, who spent much of his offseason working on his offensive game, and 6-6 Wake Forest transfer Cameron Stanley.

Robinson has been his usual tenacious self on defense and the boards, but hasn't produced any offense in the first two games. The 6-5 junior is 2-for-9 from the floor, has missed all five 3-point attempts and has 8 points. He has as many turnovers as points.

After Sunday's loss, the soft-spoken Robinson said the team would "just have to learn from it, build on it."

Stanley has had a similar start -- pretty good defense, four rebounds per game, but just eight points and five turnovers. He's 4-of-11 from the field and is 0-for-3 on 3-pointers, which was supposed to be a strength.

Peele hasn't hesitated to go to the bench, because there hasn't been enough separation between players at most positions. Ditto for Dambrot, who used 10 players in the opener. Both are still looking for the right player rotation.

Tonight's game could be a grinder, one of those low-scoring affairs decided by which team makes the fewest mistakes.

"Our ability to make game adjustments is going to be a factor with this team," Peele said.