Indians will try to forget tough trip to Tennessee

Forgive Southeast Missouri State University's basketball Indians if they try to forget their two-game Ohio Valley Conference road trip to Tennessee as soon as possible.

Close but no cigar was the theme of the trek for the Indians -- and it's been the theme of their OVC season so far.

First came Thursday's gut-wrenching 74-73 setback to Tennessee Tech as the Indians lost on a free throw following a dubious foul call with 2.8 seconds remaining.

Then came Saturday's 10th straight loss to Austin Peay, a 54-52 heart-breaker that kept the defending OVC champion Governors undefeated in league play and sent the Indians tumbling to a 2-4 conference record.

Entering the trip, the Indians figured they needed at least a split to continue on a course toward challenging for a top-four OVC finish that assures a home game for the first round of the league tournament.

Southeast has 10 OVC games remaining, and considering the scrambled state of the conference race beyond first-place Austin Peay and second-place Murray State, the Indians are still very much alive to challenge for a spot toward the top of the standings.

But this road trip -- in which they could have won both games -- certainly didn't help the Indians' cause. By dropping both contests, it puts even more pressure on Southeast to have some success on this week's trek to Alabama for games with OVC newcomers Jacksonville State and Samford.

Close doesn't count in basketball, but the Indians are SO close to perhaps being in first place rather than down toward the bottom of the OVC pack.

Southeast's four conference losses have been by a total of nine points. A few shots here or there and the Indians are riding high right now.

But that's the nature of sports. The difference between having a really good season or just a so-so one often hinges on winning close games.

The Indians have 10 conference games left to try and reverse that trend. They're generally playing solid basketball and, as long as they can keep all these narrow defeats from getting them down mentally, you've got to think the law of averages will finally start working in their favor and some of the nail-biters will start going their way.

Rarely have I ever blamed an official for a loss. And Tennessee Tech might very well have beaten Southeast in overtime Thursday or maybe even hit a shot at the buzzer, like the Eagles did earlier this season in Cape Girardeau.

But there is no way that foul should have been called in a non-shooting situation with 2.8 seconds left and the teams tied. And I would have felt the same way if the call had been made against the Eagles instead of the Indians.

To review the play, Tech guard Will Moore penetrated into the lane against the defense of Southeast guard Mike Nelke. There was some contact, but not a whole lot, and Moore wasn't trying to shoot. Still, Nelke was whistled for a foul.

If that same type of foul had consistently been called the previous 39 minutes and 57 seconds, then I wouldn't have had nearly as much of a problem with it being called at the end of the game, although it still would have been shaky.

But that type of foul had not been called previously. If the official calls that foul in that situation, then he's got to call it every time it happened previously, which means play would have been stopped about every 30 seconds and there would have been about 100 fouls called.

If a player is obviously hammered on a shot at the end of a contest, that's one thing. But to call a touch foul in a non-shooting situation of a tie game is ridiculous.

The players should have been allowed to decide what was an exciting and well-played game on both ends. It should not have been decided by an official's whistle.

Southeast junior forward Dainmon Gonner isn't the only member of his family having an impressive rookie season of Division I basketball.

Dainmon's younger brother, Josh, is a starting guard for South Carolina, which was 16-2 prior to Saturday's game against LSU for its best start in 34 years.

Josh, a junior who played with Dainmon for one season at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College, is the Gamecocks third-leading scorer at 10.8 points per game and he is second in assists. He scored a season-high 24 points Jan. 17 during an 85-64 rout of Tennessee.

Josh came close to signing with Southeast in order to play with his brother -- it would have been great to see him in an Indians uniform -- but the lure of the big-time Southeastern Conference was too great to pass up, which is totally understandable.

Watching the Eagles' dismal performance in last Sunday's NFC Championship game against the Panthers must have made Rams fans even more depressed that St. Louis failed to beat Carolina the previous week.

Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian.