COURT SESSION: SE BASKETBALL EAGER TO TIP OFF NEW SEASON

Our regular-season opener is coming up Friday night and I'm really excited about the start of the 1999-2000 season. It's a special time of year as every team is 0-0 and ready for the start of the season.

I know our basketball team is excited to finally play another college team. Every college team wants to get off to a good start to build up confidence for the season ahead. Our squad is anxious to get started and I know we will get great effort out of our players.

With nine new players, though, it will take us a while to get where we want to be. It is going to be necessary for us to "win ugly" early. We'll just have to find a way to win with tremendous effort, aggressive defense, strong rebounding and getting all the loose balls. With all our new players, we won't be polished on offense or defense early, but we still have to find a way to win.

I like this team. From day one when we started conditioning back around the first of September, I've felt good about the willingness of this team to work hard to become a good basketball team. As we've moved into practice sessions, I've seen this team develop a togetherness that is needed for us to develop as a winning team.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the progress of this team. If they continue to work hard and improve, we will have a good basketball team by the time our Ohio Valley Conference season starts for real in January.

I think that those of you who saw both our exhibition games saw that we made tremendous strides in just one week. We were sloppy and tentative against the Dreambuilders and lost the game 72-68. But just a week later we scored 92 points in beating Vasda by 22. We still have a long way to go, but we are making progress.

Western Carolina, Friday's season-opening foe, will be a new opponent for us. They were just 8-21 last season, but came on strong during the Southern Conference Tournament. I know from talking to their coach that he felt playing a number of top teams for money early in the season really destroyed his team's confidence and hurt their entire season last year.

Western Carolina does return a veteran team and will be a challenge for all our new players. At this point in the season, though, I don't worry that much about the opponent, I just worry about how much progress we are making toward being a good basketball team.

Early in the season, experience helps a lot of teams pull upsets. Last weekend in St. Louis, a highly regarded and talented but inexperienced Alabama team lost to both Northern Iowa and St. Louis.

Following our opener Friday night, we will host Rockhurst Monday night. Rockhurst is a solid Division II team out of Kansas City with a lot of players returning from last season when they were 15-12.

Everybody is excited to get started, including me, but I do worry about our inexperience. We'll need your help to get off to a good start with three straight home games before we go on the road for an early OVC contest at Tennessee Tech. Our fan support has been outstanding and I know our players and our staff really appreciate your support.

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

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