INDIANS WEAR BEST GAME FOR MIDDLE TENN.; SOUTHEAST CURISES TO 85-76 WIN

At some point during the 1996-97 season, Southeast Missouri State University's basketball Indians might have played better than they did against Middle Tennessee State Monday night.

But it's hard to remember when.

Putting on perhaps their most impressive wire-to-wire performance of the season, the Indians cruised to an 85-76 victory in front of 4,589 fans at the Show Me Center.

The triumph, in their final regular-season home game, pushed the Indians to 12-15 overall and 9-7 in Ohio Valley Conference play. Southeast is now in sole possession of fifth place in the league.

MTSU fell to 17-11 overall and 10-7 in the OVC. The Raiders are tied for third place with Tennessee Tech, both teams just one-half game ahead of the Indians in the still-scrambled conference standings that find Austin Peay (11-5) leading and Murray State (11-6) in second.

"It's a great win for us," said Southeast coach Ron Shumate. "I think this was one of our better games of the season, especially defensively.

"We really got after them and got them out of a lot of the things they like to do, particularly in the first half. Offensively, we made the extra pass tonight. When we were double-teamed, we were able to kick it out to the open man."

The Indians certainly made a believer out of MTSU coach Randy Wiel with their performance.

"I think SEMO was outstanding today," he said. "They shot the ball well, they defended well. They did a good job of taking us out of our offense.

"This was not one of our better games, but they had a lot to do with that."

Southeast, getting good shots most of the night, hit 57 percent from the field (30 of 53), including five of 10 from 3-point range. The Indians also were strong from the free-throw line (20 of 26 for 77 percent).

Defensively, the Indians limited MTSU to only 42 percent shooting (25 of 60). Southeast also won the rebounding battle by a 35-28 count and had a pretty respectable 14 turnovers, many of those coming late when the Raiders tried furiously to rally.

Bud Eley took advantage of MTSU's suspect inside game to hit 10 of 14 shots and score a game-high 26 points. The 6-foot-10 junior center also had nine rebounds, three steals, one block and one assist in 32 minutes of dominating action.

"Bud had a monster game. He was just tremendous," said Shumate. "And all our other guys really contributed."

Wiel acknowledged that the Raiders had no answer for Eley.

"We don't have inside strength," he said. "We have no answer for Eley."

Point guard Allen Hatchett, playing his second straight strong game, had 18 points and six assists.

David Montgomery, a 6-8 forward, also had his second straight impressive performance with nine points and nine rebounds.

Calvert White added 13 points and four assists while Reggie Crisp -- the team's lone senior -- had seven points, four rebounds and three assists. Richard Lyte also had a solid game with six points, three rebounds and two assists.

"Montgomery played well again and I thought Lyte also played well," said Shumate. "And it was nice to see Reggie have his last (regular-season) home game with a big win."

MTSU got 16 points from Nod Carter, 15 from Roni Bailey, 14 from Richard Duncan and 13 from Torrey Moore.

Eley scored the game's first six points as the Indians started strong and never really let up, save for a few minutes toward the end.

Southeast built a 41-31 halftime lead and steadily increased it in the second half, going ahead by 21 on White's 3-pointer that made it 71-50 with 6:26 left.

The Raiders did manage to make things semi-tense when they pulled to within 77-71 on a Malachi Allen tip-in with 58 seconds remaining.

But Eley, Hatchett, White and Dante Bryant all hit two free throws as the Indians closed things out with relative ease.

"I thought we played extremely well, with two exceptions," Shumate said. "We started the second half with a little lull and we had quite a few of our turnovers late in the game when they put pressure on us."