Miami rally falls short

Rough start costly as RedHawks suffer a 68-61 road loss at Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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Staff Report 1:22 AM Sunday, December 20, 2009

MILWAUKEE — The Miami University men’s basketball team got off to a rough start, and despite a second-half rally, couldn’t climb out of the hole it had dug for itself.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee built a 19-point lead and withstood the Miami rally for a 68-61 win on Saturday, Dec. 19.

Miami freshman Orlando Williams, a Princeton High School product, scored a team-high 17 points, all in the second half. It also was a career-high for Williams, who managed the point total in just 10 minutes of action.

“Orlando made a lot of shots down the stretch for us,” Miami coach Charlie Coles said as his team slid to 3-8 on the season. “He kept us in the game. We got their lead down to four points and it was realistic that we could pull it out, but the clock became our worst enemy then.”

Wisconsin-Milwaukee extended its lead to 19 points with 8:20 remaining. That’s when the RedHawks found some offense.

Antonio Ballard added 13 points and Kenny Hayes had 11 for Miami. Julian Mavunga had a game-high 12 rebounds, which tied his career high. He also had seven points to go with it.

“We didn’t play well as a team,” Coles said. “We can’t have guys playing in the game and not doing a good job consistently. We had two or three guys that played poorly tonight.”

Miami finished the game shooting 39.3 percent from the floor, or 22-of-56. They were 11-of-13 at the free-throw line and 6-of-21 on 3-pointers.

Wisconsin-Milwaukee shot a little better from the floor connecting on 43.1 percent of its shots. They were 17-of-27 at the charity stripe.

“We got off to a rough start and they pounded us,” Coles said.

Miami travels to Xavier University on Wednesday.

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