THE LATEST LINE: INDIANS TAKE ANOTHER SHOT AT BIG DANCE

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Last year, Southeast Missouri State University's basketball Indians had their dancing shoes just about put on before Murray State rudely forced them off.

Today, at approximately 3:30 p.m., the Indians hope to be making major plans for the biggest dance of their lives.

It's the Big Dance the NCAA Tournament. And SEMO is just one victory away from getting there.

Let's quickly flash back to one year ago, when the Indians met perennial league powerhouse Murray State in the championship game of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

The Indians, those Division I upstarts who had never before made the OVC Tournament finals, battled the star-studded Racers to the wire and appeared to have the game won until an Aubrey Reese miracle shot at the buzzer denied SEMO its first-ever NCAA Division I tourney berth.

Now, the Indians and Racers are back in the same position. At 1:30 p.m. today, in front of a national television audience on ESPN, SEMO and Murray State State will square off in the OVC tourney finals, with the winner getting to put on its dancing shoes.

SEMO certainly doesn't need another heartbreak today, although everybody realizes that beating the Racers will be some kind of chore.

But the approximately 1,500 red-clad SEMO fans who have turned the Gaylord Entertainment Center into the Show Me Center South are supremely confident that their beloved team will allow them to go dancing as well.

And why shouldn't those fans have faith in the Indians? They've given Cape Girardeau basketball fans more to cheer about much more over the last two seasons than anybody could have realistically hoped for.

Last year, in just their eighth season on the Division I level, the Indians went 20-9 and finished second in both the OVC's regular season and tournament. That overall record marked the team's best since moving up to Division I.

This year, still a season short of playing a decade worth of D-I hoops, the Indians are 23-6, they tied for the OVC regular-season championship and they're once again on the threshold of gaining their first D-I tourney berth.

And now, all that is left standing in the Indians' way is their hated rivals, the Racers.

Earlier this season, SEMO stunned Murray State 84-78, breaking the Racers' 47-game home winning streak and snapping a 15-game losing streak against the Racers.

But in the rematch in Cape Girardeau, the Racers looked like world-beaters in rolling past the Indians 77-60.

Today, it's on to round three, with the stakes as high as they can possibly get.

What coach Gary Garner and his assistants have done with SEMO hoops in three short seasons is nothing short of miraculous.

A win today would only add to the growing legacy of Garner's program. While it won't be easy, and the Racers no doubt rate as the favorites, it would be foolish to dismiss SEMO too lightly.

Doesn't dancing sound like fun?

* At the expense of sounding like a crybaby, I definitely feel like SEMO got shafted regarding the all-OVC teams that were announced Thursday.

It's hard to believe that the Indians had no first-team selection and only one player among the top 10 overall picks even though they claimed a piece of the league's regular-season title.

Not that the five players who made the first team aren't very good, but SEMO's Roderick Johnson should have definitely been on the list.

And I'm not saying Garner should definitely have been voted OVC Coach of the Year, although the job he has done is certainly superlative.

But, if the league's coaches and sports information directors (who voted on all the awards) believe SEMO only has one of the conference's top 10 players, then they definitely should have picked Garner for getting all that production out of what they deemed to be relatively average talent.

Not to knock Tennessee Tech's Jeff Lebo, who was named Coach of the Year and has done a fine job in getting that program going. But one of Lebo's players made the all-OVC first team and two more were on the second team, so the voters evidently believe he had a lot more to work with than Garner.

As a voter, what happened with the OVC awards is highly contradictory.

* Turning to a different sport, congratulations to the SEMO women's track and field team for winning the OVC indoor title last week.

Without a lot of notoriety or fanfare, coach Joey Haines has done a fantastic job with SEMO's program over the years and he, along with all his assistants and athletes, deserve high praise for a great accomplishment.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian