COURT SESSION: INDIANS SET FOR BIG WEEK OF BASKETBALL

This is the biggest week in our basketball season thus far. We have three conference games in five days at the Show Me Center and to keep our championship hopes alive we need to win all three games.

This week will make or break our conference season.

The action begins tonight against Tennessee State, with games against Middle Tennessee Thursday night and Tennessee Tech Saturday night to follow.

We will be favored to win all three games, but they will be difficult games against teams with a lot to gain. We have gone from being the hunter last season to being the hunted this season. Everybody will give us their best shot.

The three teams coming in all have extra incentive to beat us. We beat all three teams on their home floor and they are all battling for one of the four home-court spots in the Ohio Valley Conference postseason tournament.

The postseason tournaments in college basketball really keep interest up. In the OVC, eight teams will make the tournament and all 10 teams are still alive with hopes of getting one of the spots, with seven or eight teams having a shot at being one of the four hosts in the first round of the tournament. It is an exciting time of year in college basketball.

Our team still has a chance to win the OVC championship and that has been our goal all along. As long as we continue to win, we have a chance to win or tie for the title.

We enter this crucial week of basketball coming off a good win at Morehead State Saturday night. Our first half at Morehead was our best defensive half of the season. We just did not give the Morehead shooters good looks at the basket. We weren't quite as dominating defensively in the second half, but it was a good overall effort. We held a team that averages 77 points per game to only 60 points.

I thought our bench really played well at Morehead. Brian Bunche, Demetrius Watson, Nathan Owen and Fred Abraham all played well. Those four are excellent defensive players and they helped us maintain and even increase our margin in the first half when we were in a little foul trouble.

I'm really pleased with how the players off the bench are continuing to improve. They make us a better basketball team. Demetrius has been bothered by a slight hamstring pull but he came off the bench Saturday night and gave us one of his best efforts of the season with 10 points and six rebounds.

It was great to see Bud Eley become the all-time leading rebounder at Southeast. To be the all-time leader in any category means you have stood the test of time. Bud didn't just have a great game or great season rebounding, he had and continues to have a great career. Congratulations to Bud for an outstanding achievement.

Bud's rebounding has been both outstanding and consistent this season. He has been in double figures in rebounding in 10 of the last 12 games and that is tremendous.

Against Morehead State, Bud had 17 points, 12 rebounds, one block, one assist and two steals. He was 6-for-8 from the field and 5-for-5 from the free-throw line while playing only 23 minutes.

To be successful in this crucial week of basketball at the Show Me Center, our team has to stay focused on just one game at a time. We have to have great practices because we have only one day to prepare for each game.

After being on the road for our last two games, it will be great to be back at the Show Me Center this week. Following these three games we will have only one more regular-season game at the Show Me Center.

Our attendance the last few games has been outstanding and hopefully we will have big crowds this week. We will need your help in order to win all three games.

Gary Garner is the head basketball coach at Southeast Missouri State University. His weekly column is sponsored by Rust Communications.