INDIANS PEAKING AT THE RIGHT TIME; SEMO HAS WON FOUR STRAIGHT GAMES

Southeast Missouri State University basketball coach Gary Garner always stresses how a team should be playing its best at the end of the season.

And that is certainly what the Indians are doing. In its last four games -- all wins -- Southeast's victory margin has been an average of 17.5 points.

Which gives Garner and his players plenty of confidence as they prepare to head for Nashville, Tenn., for the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament semifinals.

The second-seeded Indians (19-8) will face third-seeded Middle Tennessee (12-18) at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Nashville Arena. The first semifinal pits top-seeded Murray State (25-5) against fifth-seeded Morehead State (13-14) at 5 p.m.

Saturday's winners square off at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in a game televised nationally on ESPN. The tourney champion earns an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.

"We're reaching a point in the season where every coach hopes his team is playing its best basketball," said Garner. "I think we're definitely at that point right now.

"Our team is playing with a lot of confidence right now. And it's determined confidence."

That confidence has certainly been apparent in the past four games. The Indians closed out the regular season with three OVC victories -- two on the road -- as they wound up 15-3 in league play, good for a solid second place.

Then Tuesday night, the Indians destroyed Eastern Illinois 78-57 during a first-round OVC Tournament game at the Show Me Center.

And now the Indians will look to continue breaking new ground. Their total number of wins and OVC victories are both the highest since the school made the move up to the Division I level eight years ago. And Tuesday's win marked Southeast's first OVC Tournament triumph.

So the Indians will now be heading to the OVC semifinals -- and the Nashville Arena -- for the first time ever.

"We've been playing really well our last few games and we knew it would be important to have a lot of confidence when we go to Nashville," said Southeast senior center Bud Eley. "It's real exciting for the team to be going. We know everybody is going to be tough, but we feel like we have as good a chance as anybody."

Said junior forward Mike Branson, "Our goal all along was to get to Nashville and now we want to see what we can do there. Everybody has really been playing well and we feel like we have a good chance."

* Eley, who is almost certain to be named OVC Player of the Year when the award is announced Friday night in Nashville, continues to rank high nationally in several statistical categories.

The 6-foot-10 Eley is seventh in field-goal percentage at 60.3 percent, fifth in rebounding with 10.5 per game and 25th in blocked shots with 2.5 a contest.

Eley leads the OVC in those three categories. He is also the Indians' leading scorer at 15.2 points per game while ranking second in assists with 56.

* Senior guard Cory Johnson, the OVC free-throw leader virtually all season, has once again made enough foul shots to show up in the national statistics.

Johnson ranks third in the nation at 90.4 percent as he's made 66 of 73 attempts. He's a virtual lock to establish a new Southeast record for career free-throw percentage. The record is .838 by Ronny Rankin, who played from 1984-86. Johnson's career percentage is .888.