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MIAMI BASKETBALL
RedHawks will miss Dierkers, but they should be able to weather his absence
Bench came alive against Indiana State and will need to prop up the team in the absence of starting center.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
OXFORD — There's never a good time to enter a game short-handed, but there is a bit of good news for the Miami University men's basketball team heading into tonight's game at Wright State at 7: Just as starting center Tyler Dierkers went down, the bench stepped up.
Dierkers "probably is not going to play" tonight due to illness. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, such news could have been considered crippling given that Miami's bench had produced just 18 points in its first six games.
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But in the RedHawks' most recent game — a 74-58 win against Indiana State nine days ago — the bench came up huge, collecting a combined 23 points, five rebounds and three assists.
"That was very good to see, excellent really," Miami coach Charlie Coles said. "Those weren't points late in the game, they were crucial points because we got down early on and we felt we needed to try something else."
Carl Richburg was the biggest producer off the bench with 13 points, but as a 5-foot-9 guard, he's hardly a candidate to fill the role of the 6-8 Dierkers.
In fact, no one on the MU bench is likely to step in and do everything that Dierkers has been doing.
"So far, we haven't had anybody even approach how he plays," Coles said of Dierkers, who is averaging 5.1 points, 5.3 rebounds and a team-high 4.4 assists per game.
"He's a good passer and one of those guys that makes everybody else look pretty good," Coles said. "He's the best at what he does for our team, and it's going to be tough to play without him."
Coles said he hasn't decided who will get the start in Dierkers' place, but Adam Fletcher and Dwight McCombs are the most likely choices. Those two, however, have combined to play just 51 minutes this season with zero points, five rebounds and one assist.
Tonight's game against the Raiders will mark the first of four in an eight-game stretch for Miami after going nine days without playing.
"Sometimes (a long layoff) is beneficial, sometimes it's not," Coles said. "I've had it work all kinds of ways for us in the past. It's one of those things that's hard to assess until the game is over."
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2193
or jmorrison@coxohio.com.
