THE LATEST LINE: GARNER ERA TO OFFICIALLY OPEN AT CU TONIGHT

Well, tonight the Gary Garner era of Southeast Missouri State University basketball officially begins.

The two exhibition games over the past week, wins over Dream Builders Monday night and Albacomp of Hungary Friday night, were nice warmups as Garner began introducing his style of coaching and play to area fans.

But tonight, when the Indians have a difficult first game at Colorado, is when it all starts for real. Tonight is when the games begin counting on the record.

So what should we expect out of this SEMO team? It's almost impossible to predict numbers of wins and losses, as Garner has said many times in the past few weeks.

What the coach, who came to SEMO armed with a glittering resume, has promised -- and it was evident in the first two exhibition games -- is that the Indians will play hard and play together.

Garner has no idea what to expect from the Ohio Valley Conference because he's never even seen an OVC game in person. He doesn't know what kind of talent it's going to take to compete in the league.

From covering SEMO and the OVC over the past several seasons, I don't believe this year's Indians will be one of the most physically talented teams in the league but I also believe they've got sufficient talent to do well if they do the things Garner is stressing -- namely play hard and play together, which means unselfishly.

When the coach and I sat down the other day to discuss the season, he asked me what I thought. I told him what I wrote in the above paragraph -- that I don't think the Indians will be talented enough to blow out many OVC teams but I think they'll have enough talent to win quite a few games if they play well.

Garner and I both agreed -- and this is generally the case in college basketball, unless a team is super strong or super weak -- that quite a few of SEMO's OVC games this year will be extremely close, meaning whichever team makes the plays down the stretch will likely come out on top.

But enough worrying about just how good Garner's first SEMO squad will be.

Even though there are some rugged early-season tests -- like tonight at Colorado, later this month at home against Bradley and next month at Missouri and Louisville -- I'm confident this will be a team that fans will thoroughly enjoy watching.

And I'm confident that, as Garner and his impressive staff start to bring in their own recruits, it's a program that will be on the rise in the OVC.

Let the season begin.

* Their season hasn't gone the way they expected or hoped, but you've got to give SEMO's football Indians all kinds of credit for rallying to beat SIU Saturday.

Down 17-0 in the second half, it would have been easy to pack it in. But the Indians showed plenty of heart in rallying.

* Major kudos to SEMO's volleyball team for winning its fifth straight OVC title.

After losing many key players to graduation last year, some people thought the Otahkians would not repeat as OVC champs this year. But they sure proved those folks wrong.

The Otahkians will host the OVC Tournament later in the week.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian