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By Pete Conrad, Staff Writer 11:28 AM Thursday, November 12, 2009

OXFORD — The Miami University basketball team opens its season at Towson tonight, Nov. 13 a little healthier but a little smaller than it was a few weeks ago.

Junior Antonio Ballard, who missed much of the preseason with a foot stress fracture, will be ready to play, Miami coach Charlie Coles said.

Ballard started 16 games last year and is the team’s top returning rebounder and second-leading returning scorer.

“We don’t want to rush it,” Coles said, “but he’s been practicing all week.”

Ballard won’t be in the starting lineup, though. Not yet. Coles said the first five will be Adam Fletcher or Julian Mavunga in the post, forward Nick Winbush and guards Kenny Hayes, Rodney Haddix II and Kramer Soderberg.

Two of Miami’s big men will be on the bench tonight and for the rest of the season.

Coles said he is redshirting 6-foot-7 freshman forward Drew Kelly and 6-11 freshman center Drew McGhee.

“We think that will make us stronger down the road,” the Miami coach said. “They’re not quite ready yet, but I can see they’re going to be pretty daggone good.”

Coles explained that he has learned from past mistakes, that he should have redshirted players like Nathan Peavy and William Hatcher, who he said were young for their classes and would have benefitted from the extra year of getting ready for college basketball.

Both Hatcher and Peavy saw little action in their freshman seasons, but by the time they were seniors had developed into All Mid-American Conference players.

“With a redshirt we would have had them one extra year,” Coles said.

Hatcher played only 30 total minutes as a freshman. Coles noted that if he had been redshirted, his senior year would have been 1996-07, when the RedHawks won the MAC Tournament and lost to Oregon 58-56 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Hatcher’s presence that year would have made the RedHawks, who were led by Peavy, Tim Pollitz, Michael Bramos and Doug Penno, an even more formidable team.

But back to the present. Miami’s opponent tonight has eight players returning from a team which finished 12-22 last year.

“They’re a very athletic team, and they’re expecting a much better team than they’ve had the last seven or eight years,” Coles said. “And they have a veteran coach in Pat Kennedy (474 career wins) who knows what he is doing.”

This will be the first of five straight road games for Miami.

“That’s par for the course for us. You remember last year we had our home opener March 12,” Coles joked.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.