GARNER THRILLED WITH 8-1 START TO OVC SEASON

Southeast Missouri State University basketball coach Gary Garner is an optimistic sort who generally always believes his team has a chance to win.

But Garner admits that, if somebody had told him before the season that the Indians would win eight of their first nine Ohio Valley Conference games, he might not have believed it.

"If somebody had told me before the season that we would be 8-1 right now, I would have taken it with a big smile," said Garner, who was doing just that -- smiling -- during his weekly media conference Tuesday.

"Every coach plays that game where he looks at the schedule and tries to figure out wins and losses. And you always hope you can win all the games. But I would have taken that (8-1) in a minute."

The Indians, at the halfway point of the OVC season, are in second place in the 10-team league and they trail first-place Murray State by one-half game.

Murray State is 8-0, having played one less game than Southeast. The Racers will make up that game Thursday night when they host Tennessee State, meaning the Indians will either be a full game behind the Racers or tied with them.

"You can really see the league starting to take shape now," said Garner, whose squad is 11-6 overall. "Being 8-1 at the midway point, we still have a chance of winning the championship and that's been our goal from day one."

To remain on the Racers' heels over the next two weeks, Garner knows the Indians will have their work cut out for them. Southeast has just two games during that time, but both figure to be difficult road tests, Saturday night at Eastern Illinois and the following Saturday at Morehead State.

Eastern Illinois is in third place in the OVC, although the Panthers are a full three games behind the Indians with a 5-4 record.

Morehead State is tied for fourth place at 4-4.

"They have been two of the surprise teams of the league so far," said Garner of the Panthers and Eagles, picked to finish seventh and last, respectively, in the OVC preseason poll. "The next two games will be extremely difficult."

* Garner has said all along how defense has been the key to the Indians' strong season thus far and the OVC statistics bear him out.

The Indians lead the league in the two major defensive categories of scoring defense and field-goal percentage defense.

Southeast is allowing just 64.2 points per game and opponents are shooting only 41 percent from the field against the Indians.

The Indians also rank first in blocked shots as a team with 71, 49 of them having been provided by senior center Bud Eley.

Offensively, the Indians rank fourth in scoring offense (70.4 ppg) and only sixth in field-goal percentage (.444).

* Southeast has a host of players who rank high in some of the OVC's major statistical categories.

Eley is first in blocked shots, first in rebounding (10.0 rpg), first in field-goal percentage (.599) and 11th in scoring (14.3 ppg).

Junior forward Roderick Johnson, who has really been coming on lately, is second in field-goal percentage (.580), 11th in rebounding (5.6 rpg) and 19th in scoring (11.4 ppg).

Senior guard Cory Johnson is first in free-throw percentage (.950), second in 3-point field-goal percentage (.425) and fifth in 3-pointers made per game (2.65).

Senior point guard Kahn Cotton, who has also been on a serious roll lately, is second in free-throw percentage (.838), seventh in assists (4.00 apg) and first in the all-important statistic of assist-to-turnover ratio (1.86). Cotton has 52 assists compared to only 28 turnovers.