Lady Topper Hoops: Lady Tops Squander Significant Leads, Meltdown At Home Against North Texas…

Western Kentucky women’s basketball is stagnating. After losing in embarrassing fashion against Rice Thursday, the Lady Toppers (14–11, 8–3…

Western Kentucky women’s basketball is stagnating. After losing in embarrassing fashion against Rice Thursday, the Lady Toppers (14–11, 8–3 C-USA) were in complete control against North Texas late in the basketball game.

With 1:35 remaining in the third quarter, WKU led 58–51. Over the final 11 1/2 minutes, Western just fell apart, losing that last period of time by a score of 25–9.

WKU came out of the gates against North Texas (12–11, 5–6 C-USA) impressively, starting out up 14–6 within the first six minutes of the game. From that point, WKU slowly allowed North Texas to get back into the game. Once UNT was allowed some hope at the end of the first quarter only down four despite being dominated, the second and most of the third quarters were spent in a bizarre back-and-forth battle between a WKU squad that seemed superior and disinterested and a North Texas squad that simply seemed to want it more.

All indications felt like WKU should have pulled away, but right at the moment WKU seemed poised to stake their claim on a nice, hard-fought yet double-digit victory, North Texas went on a tear, scoring at a 75% clip in the fourth quarter, while WKU shot 38%, missed 2-of-6 free throws, and did not make any of their three attempted three pointers.

Dee Givens continues her mini-slump. Dee was 2–11 from the field this game, making some hay at the free line to scratch into double digits. Against Rice, she was worse, only scoring two points on eight shots.

Against North Texas, WKU was absolutely dominated on the boards, losing the overall battle 37–24. The Lady Toppers have struggled in this area, getting outrebounded by an average of nearly four per game. However, against Rice and North Texas, the Tops were dominated by an average of 15 rebounds.

Most alarmingly, this is not something Lady Topper fans are accustomed to. WKU has now lost two in a row at home for the first time since March 2, 2013, when WKU lost to South Alabama and MTSU. That was Michelle Clark-Heard’s first year on The Hill, a year the Tops didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament.

With three losses in conference, WKU now stands in deep, deep trouble. Instead of sitting in position to win a couple of the last few games to earn a bye in the Conference USA Basketball Tournament, WKU has to play Middle twice, UAB, Marshall, and North Texas to finish the year, likely needing to win at least two of those five to even stand a chance of staying near the top of the standings.

Western now sits tied with Marshall for third place, with ODU and UAB behind the Tops and the Herd by a game or less heading into the final five conference games.

Of the contenders, WKU has by far the toughest schedule, needing to beat current two seed Middle twice, fourth seed Marshall, preseason conference favorite UAB, and North Texas on the road, who the Tops just lost to at home.

To make matters worse, if WKU does not win most of those games, they will lose tiebreakers to most of the teams that matter. Of the top eight other teams in Conference USA, WKU can either lose a tiebreaker or has already lost it to five of the eight.

None of the remaining games are “gimmes”, so WKU could realistically drop from a battle for first place this past Thursday to as far as a 10 seed by the end of the year in a worst-case scenario.

WKU must rally the troops and get it together immediately, or the Lady Tops could have their worst season in total wins, conference wins, conference seeding, and conference tournament result since Michelle Clark-Heard took over in 2012 after a 9–21 season under Mary Taylor-Cowles in 2011–12.

Despite the possible disaster, if WKU can take care of business on the road this week, the Tops would at no worse than tied for second, with UAB, MTSU, and/or Marshall virtually out of the race. If this scenario played out, WKU would then be very likely to secure a top four seed and be fairly like to finish in the top three.

All of this to say this:

It is put up or shut up time for the Tops this week at Middle Tennessee and UAB. These are your main rivals. Beat Middle and UAB, and things are looking up once again.