COURT SESSION; INDIANS BACK TO WORK AFTER HOLIDAY BREAK

I hope everyone is enjoying a happy holiday season. I certainly have enjoyed the holiday that began with a big 65-60 victory at Bradley last Wednesday night.

It was great to get a road win over the team picked to win the Missouri Valley Conference. We are getting very close to the start of Ohio Valley Conference play and a win like that should give us confidence going into the OVC schedule. The longer I coach, I see confidence as a bigger and bigger part of winning.

I thought we had very good execution both offensively and defensively in the Bradley game. Our half-court offense got us good shots and we showed good patience. Defensively, we executed our game plan and everybody carried out their role.

Amory Sanders and Mike Branson both shot the ball well, Michael Stokes kept us in our offense and played solid defense, and Brian Bunche was again all over the court. Brian had 11 rebounds, three steals and played great defense.

Fred Abraham, Nyah Jones and Emmanuel McCuthison all had solid contributions off the bench.

We had talked about rebounding all week and I told our team that if we outrebounded Bradley we would win. We ended up with a 39-32 rebounding advantage over a very athletic team.

We built up an 18-point lead with five minutes to go, but I knew Bradley would make a run, and the Braves did. They got closer than I thought they could, but we hit our free throws down the stretch and held on for a great victory.

After the game, the players were released to spend the holiday with family and friends. The players returned to campus Monday and we started a period of seven practices that will really get us back to basics and a chance to work on all parts of our game.

Three of the days have two practices, with a practice in the morning and a series of scrimmages at night. The practice will be good for us although, ideally, I would have preferred to have a game tonight or Thursday. We need to use the practices to improve in every area of our game.

Friday we will begin preparations for Sunday afternoon's game at Southern Illinois. This is an important game because it is against a good team, a regional rival, and it is the final game before we get back into the OVC schedule. We haven't played well the last two times we played SIU but, hopefully, we can play well Sunday and continue our momentum with a win.

SIU is a good basketball team that has just returned from a successful tournament appearance in Puerto Rico. The Salukis finished third in the eight-team tournament, with wins over Massachusetts and North Carolina-Charlotte, and a loss to nationally-ranked Tennessee. They host Tennessee-Martin Thursday night.

A win over SIU would really propel us into the OVC portion of our schedule. It is an easy drive to Carbondale and I hope a lot of you will take the opportunity to see us play in the 3:05 p.m. game Sunday.

I hope you all enjoy a very prosperous new year!

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