Comebacks sour Southeast losses

$$$Start

ggarner

It has been a tough week. We played our best 32 minutes of basketball of the season Saturday at Eastern Illinois but fell apart down the stretch to lose what could have been a huge win for us. It was a devastating loss that might have carried over to Monday night's game at the Show Me Center.

Again, we had a lead in the second half but Tennessee State's hot shooting and our turnovers let the Tigers leave town with a 94-82 win.

We really keyed on the game at Eastern Illinois, stressing to our players that it was the start of a new season -- the conference season. At our pre-game meal, we watched the final minutes of Wisconsin's upset win over Illinois and saw the scores indicating that Virginia, Oklahoma State and Kentucky all lost in conference games.

The conference season is a new season and I thought our team was motivated to get an upset road win. We trailed by four at halftime, but I felt like we were in a position to take charge in the second half and we did. We got the ball inside, our inside players shot 70 percent from the field and we built an 18-point lead with just over nine minutes remaining.

Eastern Illinois is a veteran team with good athletes and a great player in Henry Domercant. They applied good man-to-man pressure in the final 10 minutes and we didn't handle it well. We lost our composure and with their crowd really into the game, the Panthers came back to take the lead. We missed four straight crucial free throws late in the game. I really think that if we made those free throws, we'd win, but we wound up losing 84-74.

With the exception of the St. Louis game, where we lost by 26 points, we have been in every game this season with a chance to win in the final four or five minutes but we haven't gotten the job done. We have played too cautiously and without confidence.

We didn't play poorly Monday night, but we let Tennessee State get back in the game and then their athletic ability and hot shooting prevailed. Going into the game, Olushala Ajanaku was shooting just 20 percent from three-point range. Monday night he was 5-for-8 from there, including two back-breakers from the top of the key late in the game.

We just have to continue to stay positive and motivate our players to practice hard and play hard. Motivation is the most important thing we can do right now. We have to motivate our players to practice hard and to win.

We have two more home games this week and we can win both of them, Thursday against Eastern Kentucky and Saturday against Morehead State, but we must learn to finish games. We have won seven straight times against Eastern Kentucky and eight straight times against Morehead. They will be motivated to beat us because of our record. We have to find a way to answer the challenge.

Under the circumstances, I think our crowds have been good. I hope you will stay with us because these are two important games that could go a long way toward determining whether or not we qualify for the Ohio Valley Conference postseason tournament.

Kerry Robinson of the St. Louis Cardinals will here to sign autographs Saturday night. I look forward to visiting with Kerry. I hope you will be there to meet Kerry and to cheer the Indians to a much-needed win.

Gary Garner is the basketball coach at Southeast Missouri State University