COURT SESSION: SE FALLS JUST SHORT OF 2-0 TRIP

It's great to be back home again after our longest (by far) conference road trip of the season.

We traveled about 400 miles deep into Kentucky to play Morehead State and were able to come away with a hard-fought 64-61 victory Saturday afternoon.

Then we moved on to play Eastern Kentucky and suffered our fourth gut-wrenching loss of the season, 82-79 in double overtime Monday night.

Any time you can win on the road in college basketball -- I don't care who you're playing -- it's huge. We were so close to getting two big wins on this road trip but couldn't quite do it.

We certainly had our chances to beat Eastern Kentucky. We fell behind by 11 points in the second half, but our guys never gave up and we fought back.

We were able to take the lead late only to have Eastern hit a 3-pointer with 5.5 seconds left to force overtime. We led early in the overtime but couldn't hold it and we had a chance to tie at the end of the second overtime but could not hit the shot.

Cory Johnson had a great game against Eastern with 24 points.

Demetrius Watson had another strong game with 16 points. Demetrius is a real warrior. We didn't even know if he would be able to play after suffering a hip injury against Morehead, but he played almost the whole game.

We played shorthanded on the trip -- which is no excuse -- but our team gave a great effort.

We were especially shorthanded against Morehead when Demetrius didn't play in the second half because of the hip injury and David Montgomery got into foul trouble before fouling out with about eight minutes left.

One of our walk-ons, 6-foot-8 William Lucas, really gave us a big lift against Morehead. He played nine minutes and scored four big points.

"Chief" only joined us a short time ago and really doesn't know our offense yet. But he's really strong and helped us inside.

We're really looking forward to getting Bud Eley back. It's just about four weeks now since he broke his foot against SIU.

Bud seems to be doing well and he's going to have the foot x-rayed again Thursday. If everything checks out fine, he might be able to play that night.

Right now, the OVC race is really a mad scramble. Middle Tennessee had a big win over Murray State over the weekend and the Raiders are in first place with a 3-0 record.

Murray, Eastern Illinois and Tennessee-Martin are all 3-1, Tennessee State is 2-1 and we're tied with Eastern Kentucky at 2-2.

The conference season is always an exciting time of the year because conference play is what ultimately determines whether you make it to the NCAA Tournament.

We've got a big two-game OVC homestand coming up, facing Tennessee Tech Thursday night and Middle Tennessee Saturday night.

We've got great fans and hopefully we'll have big crowds this week as we try to bounce back from Monday's tough loss.

Seeing the type of crowds at these last two road games really makes you appreciate the fans we have. There were only 744 people at the Morehead game and only 1,300 at Eastern Kentucky.

Our fans always give us a tremendous lift. See you at the Show Me Center!

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