STAR IN THE DARKNESS; OTAHKIANS FIND A BRIGHT SPOT IN NEWCOMER KOESTER

Southeast Missouri State University's women's basketball team is having a disappointing season by anybody's standards, struggling to a 4-13 record so far.

But it's scary -- particularly for coach Ed Arnzen -- to wonder where Southeast would be without Jamie Koester, a first-year Otahkian who is leading the team in scoring and rebounding.

Koester, a 5-foot-11 junior guard who transferred from Kansas State, is averaging 14.5 points and 8.6 rebounds per contest since becoming eligible 11 games ago.

"Jamie has really helped us and I don't even want to think where we'd be without her," said Arnzen. "I just wish we could have had her all year. I think it would have made a big difference.

"The first four or five games, she really had to establish herself because she hadn't played in a while. But since then, she's really played well."

A native of tiny Cairo, Mo. -- the town of less than 300 is located about an hour north of Columbia -- Koester had to sit out an entire school year under NCAA transfer rules after coming to Southeast from Kansas State.

Koester went through pre-season conditioning at Kansas State but never actually played in any games before deciding to transfer to Southeast for the second semester of the 1995-96 school year.

"It had been about a year and a half since I last played in a real game, so I was shaky at first," said Koester of her early-season play. "But I think I'm getting better with the more games I play."

Koester actually considered attending Southeast straight out of Moberly Area Junior College, where she helped lead the team to a fifth-place finish in the national junior-college tournament as a freshman and averaged 19 points per game as a sophomore.

Current Southeast assistant Alan Eads was Koester's coach during her freshman season at Moberly. Eads then became a member of Arnzen's staff. After Koester's sophomore season at Moberly, Arnzen and Eads recruited Koester heavily.

"We really wanted to get Jamie here after her career at Moberly," said Arnzen.

Koester, however, opted for Kansas State of what was then the Big Eight Conference and is now the Big 12 Conference.

"I wanted to go there because it was in the Big Eight," she said. "I basically liked it there, but there were some things going on that made me unhappy."

So Koester decided to transfer to Southeast.

"I decided to come here because of coach Eads," she said. "I'm glad I did. I like the school and I like all the girls on the team. We're all good friends."

Since becoming eligible for the Jan. 2 game against Oakland City, Koester has certainly made her presence felt all over the court.

She's been the Otahkians' leading scorer in five of the 11 games in which she has played, including the last three, during which time she has averaged just over 19 points a contest.

Koester's most impressive performance so far came Jan. 18 on the road against Middle Tennessee State. She scored 19 points and pulled down 20 rebounds during an overtime win. Those 20 boards mark the second-best single-game rebounding performance in school history, behind former standout Gray C. Harris' 25 rebounds.

"That was my best game in a way and it was really exciting to get the second-most rebounds ever here," she said. "But offensively I didn't feel like I had a good night that night."

Able to score from in close and long range, Koester is shooting nearly 45 percent from 3-point distance (17 of 38) and she also has a team-high 23 steals. In addition, she has 17 assists and 12 blocked shots to rank among the squad's leaders in those categories.

"Jamie does a lot more than just score and rebound," Arnzen said. "She's a very good all-around player. And we put her on the other team's best player, so she has to work all the time

"And she's also a very good leader. She has a great attitude. She just has a lot of leadership qualities."

About the only thing Koester hasn't been good at so far is free-throw shooting. She's struggling along at 39 percent (13 of 33), which surprises her.

"I've always been a good free-throw shooter," she said. "It must be mental. I've been working a lot on it and I hope to get better."

The good-natured, personable Koester has been playing basketball for about as long as she can remember. Both her parents were accomplished players and her 6-7 brother is a freshman on the basketball team at Missouri Valley College.

"My mom played for the All-American Redheads, a pro team that traveled all over the U.S. and Canada. She's still really good. And my dad was really good, so I kind of grew up with basketball," she said. "I've probably been playing since about the time I was born."

Also a standout softball player in high school, the criminal justice major hopes to some day work in the area of rehabilitating juveniles.

In the meantime, Koester is hopeful that the Otahkians can still salvage something out of this season and then really improve next year during her senior campaign.

"We've been trying to really work on our intensity lately. That should help us," she said. "Hopefully we can still get to the OVC Tournament this year and then next year we hope to do a lot better."