Indians present road challenge for Tennessee St.

ggarner

We are in a key stretch in our season with four of our next five Ohio Valley Conference games at the Show Me Center. I've always said you have to be able to defend your home court in order to compete for a top spot in the league.

The home court advantage is just not the Show Me Center court and its familiar surroundings. When we play at home, our players sleep in their own beds, eat in familiar surroundings and don't have to spend time in a bus. The biggest advantage of all is the home crowd.

Like I said last week, the crowd was a big factor in our win over Murray State and we need that type of enthusiastic crowd tonight and Saturday.

Tonight's game with Tennessee State will be the first time in over a month that our students will be on campus and we need a big student turnout.

Tennessee State is a very scary 2-15 team. The Tigers have good enough talent to beat any team in our league. The off the court problems, including changing coaches during the season and an ongoing NCAA investigation, have kept Tennessee State from coming together as a team, but they have very good talent.

TSU has great athletes, quickness, size (a 6-foot-10, 270-pound center) and good offensive skills. The Tigers average over 75 points per game and they want a fast-paced game. They are last in the OVC in scoring defense, allowing more than 92 points per game, so hopefully we can take advantage of that.

It will be important for us to rebound and get back on defense in order to cut down on easy baskets. We need to get off to a great start and keep them down because they are capable of scoring a lot of points in a hurry and if they get off to a fast start they will really be dangerous.

Saturday night, two-time defending OVC champion Tennessee Tech will be the opponent at the Show Me Center. I thought before the season started that Tech would win the conference, but they started 0-2 and a lot of people wrote them off. Now they are on a four-game win streak and stand 4-2 and in second place in the OVC.

Tennessee Tech has great athletes and tremendous size. Their smallest starter is 6-4 and they have two dominant big men inside. It will be a real challenge for us, because we have had trouble defending inside.

Working on post defense continues to dominate a lot of our practice time. We are getting better, but we need continued improvement.

At this time of year, I get a lot of questions about our recruiting.

There are only about five or six weeks left in the high school and junior college seasons and so our coaches are really busy evaluating players for the next two recruiting classes. I think our recruiting is going well and I am comforted by the fact we already have three players in school and practicing with us every day.

Mike Nelke, a transfer point guard from Valparaiso, has been with us all season while Reggie Golson is really starting to come around after being forced to redshirt this season because of a knee injury. The latest to join the group of redshirts is Dainmon Gonner, 6-6, 230, who joined us at the semester.

All three are very good players who are learning our systems in practice and they are making this year's team better because of the competition in practice. They will all have two years of eligibility remaining. Recruiting is a year-round task, but right now I feel good about this year's prospects.

The task at hand is Tennessee State and we need a great week of practice to be ready tonight. I hope I'll see you at the Show Me Center.

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