THE LATEST LINE: SEMO BASEBALL TEAM IMPRESSIVE, BUT EIU IS RELENTLESS

Southeast Missouri State University's baseball team is doing just about everything it can to try and finally win its first Ohio Valley Conference regular-season championship.

But it's apparently the Indians' bad luck that what could turn out to be their best-ever OVC season is coming in the same year that Eastern Illinois is putting on a show that has been unmatched in recent league history.

The Indians' doubleheader sweep of visiting Tennessee Tech Saturday improved their conference record to 13-4 with only four league games remaining. In the past three years, SEMO has finished second in the OVC with records of 17-6, 15-8 and 15-9. Never have the Indians wound up with fewer than six conference defeats.

Right now, the Indians are in second place by a fairly comfortable margin. And in most years, their current league mark would have them either in first place or no more than a game or so out; since 1996, the OVC champion has finished with at least six losses.

But this isn't most years. That's because Eastern Illinois is setting a pace that has veteran OVC baseball watchers shaking their heads.

The Panthers, picked to finish fourth in the league's preseason poll, are 16-0 with four games left. In the last five years, the OVC champion has lost at least six games. And in the last 10 years, the conference winner has suffered at least three defeats.

Not since 1990, when Middle Tennessee went 14-0, has an OVC team romped through the regular season undefeated. Prior to that, it hadn't happened since 1963.

While the Panthers still face a major chore in trying to finish with a perfect conference record --they host the Indians next weekend in the final series -- they can clinch the championship today with either a win over Morehead State or a SEMO loss to Tennessee Tech.

And that would mean the Indians -- who are an impressive 32-14 overall -- would be relegated to the OVC's bridesmaid role for the fourth straight year even though they could very well wind up with their best conference record ever and also threaten last year's single-season school victory mark of 37.

But, as SEMO coach Mark Hogan has pointed out many times while tipping his hat to Eastern Illinois, finishing a strong second to the Panthers in this year's race would certainly be no shame.

And anyway, the games that really count the most will be played May 16-19 in Paducah, Ky. That's when the OVC Tournament to decide the league's automatic NCAA qualifier will be held.

* If 7-foot-1 center Kostas Avgerinos signs with SEMO's men's basketball program -- as is expected to happen -- then that certainly changes the complexion of the Indians' recruiting class for next season.

Avgerinos -- his coach at the College of Southern Idaho, Derek Zeck, said he will sign with the Indians very soon -- would transform what had looked to be a decent if not spectacular incoming crop of players into a pretty impressive group.

Zeck told me that Avgerinos is an extremely skilled player -- he was at one time courted by some major Division I programs -- who he believes will be a star in the OVC, if not next season then at least down the road.

* Major kudos to the Cape Girardeau Central High School boys tennis team for finishing its season with a 16-0 record in dual matches, marking the Tigers' first perfect record in at least 15 years.

Central, which last year won its first district title in a long time, is developing quite a program under coach Bud Craven, who works extremely hard at his craft and deserves plenty of praise.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian