THE LATEST LINE: THE PIECES ARE NOW IN PLACE FOR SE HOOPS

I've been on vacation -- and out of town -- for the past week and a half, so I was basically out of touch with what was going on around the local sports scene.

But before I left, I pretty well knew that Southeast Missouri State University's basketball signing of big center Nyah Jones was imminent.

And when I called back to Cape Girardeau to check on some things a couple of days ago, I was told that the Indians had indeed landed the 6-foot-11 product of Meridian (Miss.) Community College.

The hoop season can't get here fast enough as far as I'm concerned.

Sure, SEMO has some big holes to fill from last year's team that was the school's best ever on the NCAA Division I level.

And make no mistake about it: hot-shot recruits are not automatically guaranteed success on the Division I level.

But SEMO's recruiting class -- completed by the signing of Jones, who is talented enough to have originally been given a scholarship by Missouri -- certainly appears to be big-time.

Add the new recruits to the several top-flight players returning from last season and it's not unrealistic to think that the Indians will be contending for the Ohio Valley Conference championship again in 1999-2000.

It's enough to make a SEMO hoop fan salivate -- even though the basketball season is still several months away.

* Even though I missed the first couple of days of the National Baseball Congress Mid-South Regional being played in Cape, it sounds like the tournament is off to a great start.

I'm looking forward to next weekend's conclusion of the tourney, when the automatic NBC World Series berth is awarded.

* I spent the majority of my time off in Newport Beach, Calif., where the humidity was low and the prices extremely high.

It was kind of strange, walking outside during the middle of the day and not automatically working up a big-time sweat.

* I also spent a few days in St. Louis, where I took in a couple of pretty entertaining Cardinals games.

And while in St. Louis, I met up after one of the games with good friend Jill Pizzotti, a former SEMO Otahkian player and assistant coach who has earned rave reviews for her work as St. Louis University's head women's basketball coach.

In our entourage that night was ex-SLU men's hoop coach Charlie Spoonhour, whom I met in person for the first time and whose totally entertaining stories were everything I had always heard them to be -- and then some.

`Spoon,' who coached in Bloomfield many years ago, knows just about everybody -- including numerous sports people from Southeast Missouri.

He and SEMO coach Gary Garner go way back and he had plenty of praise for the Indians' entire hoop staff as well as a few interesting tales about Garner -- which will go unmentioned in this space (wink, wink).

But I'll be sure to tell coach Garner about it the next time I see him.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian