THE LATEST LINE: RACERS PUT ON QUITE A SHOW IN SHOWDOWN

Before this basketball season started, many Ohio Valley Conference observers thought Murray State could potentially be head and shoulders above everybody else in the league.

After all, the Racers returned four starters -- including arguably two of the league's top three players -- from last season's squad that won its 11th OVC title in 12 years.

And that's the reason Murray was an unanimous selection to win the crown in the league's preseason poll.

For much of the campaign, however, the Racers had not been playing like the OVC's best team. In fact, if a few narrow escapes had gone the other way, Murray might not have even been toward the top of the standings entering its showdown with Southeast Missouri State University.

But Saturday, in front of the largest crowd to ever watch a basketball game at the Show Me Center, the Murray team that many people had been expecting to see all season finally surfaced.

And it wasn't a pretty sight to most of the 7,241 fans on hand, save for a few hundred Racers' supporters who thoroughly loved their team's 77-60 romp.

The Racers scored the game's first four points, held the Indians to only five points in nearly nine minutes at the outset and basically were never threatened, save for a few minor SEMO runs.

It was certainly an impressive performance by the Racers, as SEMO coach Gary Garner acknowledged in his post-game comments.

Garner said Murray's play looked pretty flawless to him, as it did to me and several of the reporters who regularly cover the Racers.

Those Kentucky scribes told me that this was the Murray team they had been expecting to see for the past several weeks, and the one that had performed so impressively early during non-league wins over the likes of Rutgers and Detroit.

There is no question the Racers have the talent to be one of the top 25 or 30 teams in the nation, as they showed Saturday. On this day, Murray could have probably beaten several squads ranked in the top 25.

But consistency is a big key for any championship-caliber team, and the Racers have not really demonstrated any real consistency over the past month and a half.

That's why the rest of the regular season still figures to be mighty interesting, with SEMO still having a very real crack at the OVC title, even though the Indians have now fallen a game behind the Racers on the loss side.

And that's why the OVC postseason tourney -- which determines the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament -- should be something.

The Racers and Indians have now split two meetings, and they could have a rubber-game shootout in the OVC tourney finals, which would be a rematch of last season.

But the rest of the OVC appears to be so much improved over last year, there is no guarantee both Murray or SEMO -- or even one of them -- will reach the title game.

It should be quite a finish.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian