By Mark Schmetzer
Enquirer contributor

Miami's Mid-American Conference football champions will be honored at halftime of tonight's basketball game against Wright State, and the gridiron RedHawks could be the highest-scoring Miami team on the floor.

The football team averaged 42.5 points a game this season. The basketball team has averaged 37 points in its last two games and 45 in its last three - all of them losses.

"I'm obviously very, very frustrated," basketball coach Charlie Coles said. "It's been this way for three years now. We just haven't scored. I'm racking my brain."

Miami (2-3) finished last in the MAC in scoring with a 63.9-point average and second last with a 42.2 team field-goal percentage two years ago, prompting Coles to install a Princeton-style offense. Instead of helping, the RedHawks' shooting and scoring has dropped to 42 percent and 58.6 points.

The numbers aren't any better this season. Miami is shooting 37.9 percent and averaging 54.6 points.

The RedHawks' options are limited, Coles said, but they don't include abandoning the base offense.

"I'm tempted, but I don't think that would help," he said. "If we could get our shots, we wouldn't be running that offense."

The RedHawks will try to get on track against the Raiders (1-3). Miami has won two straight and eight of the last nine against Wright State, but Coles isn't confident.

"Because of the league we play in and the talent, it's going to be nothing but tight," he said. "I look on our schedule, and I don't know who we can beat.

"I'm scared to death."

DRAKE LEAVES: Fifth-year senior guard Larry Drake left the team Tuesday and will forgo the rest of his eligibility. Drake appeared in one game this season after battling a foot injury.

"I felt it was time for me to move on and get started with life after college," Drake said.