COURT SESSION: SE RESPONDS TO LOSSES WITH BRILLIANT GAME

I was really pleased with the play of our team on Tuesday night against Middle Tennessee. You never know how a team will react after a couple of tough losses, but I was really proud of how our team came out very focused and really did a great job on defense against a good Middle Tennessee team that had won five straight games.

We not only wont he game, we dominated from beginning to end. Middle Tennessee has a good perimeter shooting team and our defense just shut them down. Fred Ortiz is averaging 15 points per game and is a good 3-point shooter, but he went 0-for-7 from the field. Jonathan Whitworth came in shooting about 56 percent from three and he didn't even get a shot off. Michael Stokes and Antonio Short did a great job guarding them, but you also have to credit the inside defense of Brian Bunche and Roderick Johnson. Stokes and Short were able to pressure the shooters and push them out on the court because they knew that if Ortiz or Whitworth got around them, Bunche and Johnson would be waiting. Brian and Roderick also did a great job of handling their post players one-on-one without help.

Before the game, I asked Brian if he could handle Lee Nosse by himself or if he thought we needed double-team help. The look Brian gave me let me know he was up to the task of handling Nosse by himself. It was a great defensive effort.

We again had a lot of blocked shots with nine against Middle. We now have 112 blocks on the season and our school record is 117 established last season when Bud Eley had 75 blocks. This year, we don't have one dominant shot blocker. We have several. In fact, five of our players have 16 or more blocks led by Johnson with 27.

It is just another illustration of how this is a group that plays as a team. We are family, all pulling in the same direction. We don't have a dominant scorer or rebounder, but we are winning because every player is doing his part.

Offensively, Mike Branson got five quick points and we seemed to deflate the Blue Raiders when we went up by 20 at 23-3 midway in the half. It was a great win, but we don't have long to savor the victory.

Tennessee-Martin will be at the Show Me Center on Thursday night and our players remember that the Skyhawks upset them earlier this year at Martin. We shot only 26 percent in the first half and the Skyhawks built a 12-point lead and although we made a couple of runs late in the game, we could never get closer than five points. It was our first OVC loss of the season and I know our players will be looking to even the score tonight.

We have to play one game at a time. Right now the Tennessee-Martin game is the most important game on our schedule.

Following the Tennessee-Martin game we will host Murray State in a nationally televised game on Saturday at 1 p.m. It should be another great game and the fact that it is nationally televised from the Show Me Center is certainly a big boost for our basketball program.

In addition to basketball fans across the nation, we will have all our recruits watching. Hundreds of high school and junior college coaches will get to see our team and our facility. Players love to play on television.

When we played Murray at Murray, the game was regionally televised by Fox Sports South and Michael Stokes' family in Virginia got to see him play for the first time this season. They will be watching again on Saturday.

Our fans continue to come out in big numbers at the Show Me Center and our players really appreciate it. I hope you will be at our final two regular-season home games this Thursday and Saturday. If we take care of business and defend our home court, we will take a big step toward bringing our fans one more game at the Show Me Center in the opening round of the OVC Tournament.

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