Indians face test of OVC best

Southeast faces OVC co-champion Morehead State in opening round of OVC Tournament.

By Marty Mishow ~ Southeast Missourian

Southeast Missouri State University coach Gary Garner plans to give the Indians a motivational blast from his past as they prepare for the first round of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

The Indians (11-18, 5-11) play at Morehead State (19-8, 13-3) at 6 p.m. tonight. The winner earns a berth in Friday's OVC Tournament semifinals in Nashville, Tenn.

MSU, which tied with Austin Peay for a share of its first OVC regular-season title in 19 years, is the No. 2 seed for the eight-team tournament. Southeast, which tied with Eastern Kentucky for seventh place, is seeded seventh.

Garner knows the Indians will be big underdogs against a team they lost to twice during the regular season, 77-63 in Morehead, Ky., and 79-69 in Cape Girardeau.

But Garner also realizes that major upsets often happen in conference tournaments -- and he knows all about that first-hand.

When Garner was an assistant coach at Missouri in the late 1970s, he said the Tigers finished tied for last in the old Big 8 Conference. They went on the road and pulled off a first-round upset in the conference tournament, then moved on to a neutral site in Kansas City and proceeded to win the title and claim an NCAA berth.

"I've talked about that a lot and I'm going to remind our team of that again," Garner said. "The format was exactly the same, where the first round was played at the higher seed and then you went to a neutral floor for the semifinals and championship.

"We know we're the big underdogs against Morehead State, but in a one-game situation anything can happen. That's the way we're approaching it."

There is no doubt the Eagles will be a formidable opponent. They feature arguably the OVC's top all-around player in junior swingman Ricky Minard, the league's second-leading scorer at 22.3 points per game. And they also have the conference's third-leading scorer in senior guard Chez Marks (17.4 ppg). Marks leads the league in 3-point shooting, hitting better than 46 percent.

Minard and Marks combined for 63 points against Southeast during MSU's 79-69 win at the Show Me Center on Feb. 6, with Marks scoring 33.

The Eagles are the OVC's highest-scoring team at 81.2 points per game and they also are solid defensively, which makes for a bad combination as far as Southeast is concerned.

"Minard is such a great player and Marks is probably the most improved player in the conference," Garner said. "They've got those two guys who can really score and they've got other solid players around them. They'll be very hard to beat, especially on the road."

Sophomore guard Derek Winans said the Indians will approach the contest with a positive attitude, knowing the OVC Tournament is much like a second season.

"It's like starting over," Winans said. "You can pretty much throw the records out. Everybody basically starts 0-0.

"We know Morehead is a great team and they're going to be really hard to beat, but if we play really good, then you never know."

While the Indians will be looking to extend their season tonight, junior center Brandon Griffin will shoot for an impressive personal milestone.

Griffin, the OVC's second-leading rebounder, needs six rebounds to break the school's single-season record held by former Southeast standout Bud Eley, who twice grabbed 310 rebounds in a season.

A junior-college transfer who is a leading candidate for OVC Newcomer of the Year honors, Griffin is averaging a double-double this season with 12.2 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.

"If Brandon breaks Bud's record, that would be a tremendous accomplishment," Garner said. "To average more than 10 rebounds for an entire season is something. Brandon has just had a great year for us."

In tonight's other first-round games, No. 1 seed Austin Peay (20-7, 13-3) hosts No. 8 Eastern Kentucky (11-16, 5-11); No. 3 Tennessee Tech (18-11,11-5) hosts No. 6 Tennessee-Martin (14-13, 7-9); and No. 4 Murray State (16-11, 9-7) entertains No. 5 Eastern Illinois (14-14, 9-7).