Conference opener a test for Southeast

I hope you had a safe and happy New Year's celebration.

Hopefully our basketball team will get off to a great start in 2003 beginning with Saturday night's home game at the Show Me Center against Eastern Illinois.

I've told our team that this game is the most important game of the season because it is our Ohio Valley Conference opener. I'm excited about starting the conference season, and I know our players will be ready Saturday night.

We have had great practices since returning from Sunday's game at Creighton. Our practices have been very enthusiastic, and our players are working extremely hard. We are improving as a basketball team.

I think the Creighton game helped us, although it will go down in history as a 23-point loss to a team ranked 18th nationally in both major polls. In fact, after beating Southeast, Creighton moved up to 15th in the national polls.

Brandon Griffin continues to do a great job on the boards. He had 13 rebounds and a career high nine assists against the very talented Creighton team. He is just relentless on the boards and has taken over as the rebounding leader in the OVC. He also leads the OVC by a considerable margin in offensive rebounding. If Brandon continues his domination of the boards, we will win a lot of games in the OVC.

It all starts Saturday night with Eastern Illinois. The Panthers feature Henry Domercant, one of the nation's leading scorers with an average of 26.5 points per game He is a tremendous player who had 38 and 39 points in the two games against us last year.

Earlier this year we played against the nation's leading scorer, Michael Watson of UMKC. It is unusual to play two of the top scorers in the nation in the same season. We hope to do the same things against Domercant that worked against Watson. Although Watson scored 28 points, he was only 7-of-22 from the field. Like Watson, Domercant will get his shots, but we hope to force him into a bad shooting night.

Even though Domercant scored 39 points in last year's game at the Show Me Center, we won by 15 points by keeping the other players under control. The Panthers' J.R. Reynolds is an outstanding 3-point shooter who can really get it going if we concentrate all our efforts on Domercant. It will be a real challenge for our defense.

As OVC play begins, Murray State appears to be the favorite with Tennessee Tech close behind. After that, it will really be a battle with a lot of teams having an eye on those third and fourth spots that will ensure a first-round home game in the OVC tournament.

A good OVC start is crucial for our basketball team. We follow with road games at Eastern Kentucky and Morehead State, so it is important to win at home Saturday night.

I can't wait! I'll see you at the Show Me Center Saturday night.

Gary Garner is the men's basketball coach at Southeast Missouri State University