COURT SESSION: INDIANS RIDE DEFENSE TO PERFECT START IN OVC PLAY

As we head into a game Thursday night at Tennessee-Martin and Saturday night at Murray State, we must remember that we have been successful by taking one game at a time.

It is easy to say you take one game at a time, but it takes great concentration on the part of the staff and our players to make sure that happens. I'm reminded that Mr. Iba used to always say that you shouldn't worry about upsetting people, just don't get upset.

Our next game is with Tennessee-Martin and our entire focus right now is on that game. Our goal is to win the championship and to keep on course to do that we need to win both games remaining this week. If we lose at Martin and beat Murray State, we are just 1-1 in the two conference games and we want to be 2-0.

Tennessee-Martin is an improved team with very good athletes. They always get up to play the Indians and so our team will have to be totally focused and ready to play on Thursday night.

We had a good win at Middle Tennessee on Monday night that again pointed out how important our defense is. We are winning games with our defense!

Our players are taking pride in their defensive effort and the results are showing up in the win column. I constantly urge our team during timeouts to play defense one stop at a time.

We lead the OVC in fewest points allowed (58.7), opponents' field-goal percentage (.388) and opponents' 3-point field-goal percentage (.297). We are also at or near the top of the league in blocked shots.

We have an improved defensive team this season because each player has accepted his role and all our players are playing extremely hard. We have good defensive point guards in Michael Stokes and Fred Abraham. They apply pressure to the ball and stop penetration. Inside we have two very tough defenders in Brian Bunche and Roderick Johnson. They know how to play tough post defense and their presence inside means we don't have to play as much help defense.

Nyah Jones also does a good job defending inside. With his size, he blocks a lot of shots and alters others.

The rest of our players know their roles in the individual game matchups and we have great effort and communication from all our players including the starters and the players off the bench.

Defense is five men executing with great effort. If one man lets up, the entire defense breaks down.

Defense and rebounding go together. It makes no sense to play great defense, force a bad shot and then let the other team get the rebound.

We have been doing a better job on the boards and our rebounding at Middle Tennessee was outstanding, particularly the rebounding of Roderick. He had 17 rebounds. I don't care if it's high school, college or pro, 17 rebounds is quite an accomplishment. Roderick rebounds with great effort and he leads our team on the boards with 8.5 per game. He also leads the team in blocks with 17 and in steals with 19.

After the games at Tennessee-Martin and Murray State, we return to the Show Me Center for a Tuesday night game with Tennessee Tech. It will be the first of two games during the Union Planters Bank Basketball Extravaganza. We certainly appreciate the continued support of Union Planters Bank in making the Tennessee Tech and Eastern Illinois games a part of their Basketball Extravaganza.

I hope we will see you at Martin on Thursday night, at Murray on Saturday night and back at the Show Me Center on Tuesday night. We are entering a very exciting portion of our schedule.

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