ESPN Men's Basketball

Tennessee Tech associate head coach Steve Payne admits he thought things would be back to normal by now.

He didn't think mid-July would arrive and Golden Eagles head coach Mike Sutton would still be hospitalized.

Sutton, after all, is all about working hard and bringing energy. How could anything keep him down?

Neither Payne nor many others knew much about Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare illness in the immune system that attacks the peripheral nervous system and causes paralysis, when Sutton was stricken in April.

"I don't think anybody realized what we were in for," Payne said. "As a staff and a team, and the people in the community, we're in a state of shock."

After being taken to a Virginia hospital during a trip to watch Willie Jenkins play in the Portsmouth Invitational, Sutton has spent the past three months in a Nashville hospital, working to regain movement in his body.

Because Sutton -- last season's Ohio Valley coach of the year -- is still using a ventilator to help him breathe, he remains in critical condition at Specialty Select Hospital. Tennessee Tech spokesman Rob Schabert said Sutton has regained slight movement in his hands and feet.

"He is getting better, his progress has been remarkable," Payne said. "He's got the words 'hard work' on the board in his room. That's one of his sayings."

No one knows for sure when Sutton will be discharged from the hospital. No one knows when he will return to work.

"I miss Coach tremendously, he's one of my best friends," Payne said. "I don't want to think about the prospect of starting practice and games without him. We pray and hope he'll be better soon."

Sutton has been almost exclusively off-limits to reporters. The only interview he has given was to the hometown Cookeville Herald-Citizen.

"You have to work hard, you have to do the little things," Sutton told the newspaper. "When it first struck me, I couldn't do anything. Now I can move my legs and I can talk.

"I'm showing progress. It's just a matter of getting through the next step."

While still hospitalized, Sutton is trying to do as much as he can from his hospital room. He speaks with Payne and assistants Dexter Williams and former Kentucky guard Saul Smith on the phone regularly.

"The first time he talked to me on the phone, it was great," Payne said. "I'm glad to hear from him. Mentally, he's ready to get back and get to work."

That said, the rest of the Golden Eagles' coaches are trying to stay on top of things and keep Sutton from worrying. When Sutton asks about something, they want to say it's already been handled.

"He's always going to be in charge," Payne said. "I'm his assistant coach and they're his players. Since he got here, he had an idea, a philosophy of what he wants. We're doing things the way he'd hope we'd do them."

The Golden Eagles have been quite successful under Sutton. Last season, Tennessee Tech won the regular-season OVC title with a 12-4 record before losing to Austin Peay in the conference tournament. In Sutton's three seasons, Tennessee Tech is 51-38 overall and 30-18 in league play.

This season, Tennessee Tech will, once again, be one of the teams in the mix in the Ohio Valley, despite losing Jenkins, the OVC's second-leading scorer and the league's player of the year, and forward Ben Jacobson.

"We'll have more talent from No. 1 to No. 13 than last year," Payne said. "But there are a lot of teams in our league with a lot of people back. There wasn't much difference between No. 1 and No. 7 in our league last year and I think our league will be better."

That said, the folks around Tennessee Tech have more to be concerned with right now than a basketball season which is still four months away. When summer school began, the entire team made the 80-mile trip to see Sutton in the hospital. The coaching staff has been there as much as possible to see him, something that has been more difficult this month because of recruiting and camps.

"The hope is he's back [for the season]," Payne said. "We want him back as soon as possible. It's not going to be the same without him. We know he's going to be back. It's not if, but when."

The entire episode has certainly put things in perspective, something that at times can be lacking in college basketball.

"When you're on the road [recruiting] and you're missing your family and chasing here and there, it's hard to feel sorry for yourself," Payne said. "He has been as positive and loyal as any human being could be. He misses all of this."

And the folks at Tennessee Tech certainly miss Sutton.

Good signs: Like every league that's not a major conference, things go better with experienced players. This season the Ohio Valley certainly is going to have significant experience. That's especially the case with the teams that finished atop the league standings a year ago. Tennessee Tech returns four of its top five scorers. Eastern Kentucky has four of its top five scorers back, all of whom will be seniors. Murray State doesn't lose a single player from a team that went 17-11 overall and 11-5 in OVC play and Samford has its top three players back. While that doesn't guarantee anything, it is certainly a start.

Red flag: Has expansion been good for the Ohio Valley? Since adding Jacksonville State and Samford to the league, the OVC has finished 23rd and 25th in the Ratings Percentage Index. The OVC was 18th or 19th in three of the four previous seasons before expansion. What does that mean? It might lead to a lower NCAA Tournament seed for the OVC tournament champion.

Worth watching: Want to look smart when you talk to your buddies? Tell them how good Tennessee State guard Bruce Price is. Haven't heard of him? There's a decent chance that will change. Price is a lightning-fast guard who has the ability to both stroke it from the perimeter and get to the basket. In two years at Tennessee State, Price has averaged 15.5 points per game.

They have a new coach, but our resident bracketologist, Joe Lunardi, still thinks Eastern Kentucky is headed back to the NCAA Tournament. He has the Colonels as a 15-seed in his early look at the 2006 NCAA Tournament.

2006 Bracketology

2004-05 Standings
Team	League record	Overall record
Tennessee Tech	12-4	18-11
E. Kentucky*	11-5	22-9
Murray State	11-5	17-11
Samford	10-6	15-13
SE Missouri	9-7	15-14
Tennessee State	9-7	14-17
Austin Peay	9-7	13-19
E. Illinois	7-9	12-16
Morehead State	5-11	11-16
Tennessee-Martin	3-13	6-21
Jacksonville St.	2-14	7-22

* -- NCAA Tournament

Expected leading returning scorers
Player (Team)	2004-05 PPG
Josh Gomes (E. Illinois)	16.8
J. Robert Merritt (Samford)	16.5
Jared Newson (UTM)	15.4
Maurice Hampton (APSU)	14.7
Walker Russell (Jax St.)	14.5

Jeff Shelman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (www.startribune.com) is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.