Lady Topper Notebook: Lady Tops Moving in the Right Direction; Earn WNIT Bid

Western Kentucky Women's Basketball is in the WNIT for the third time in five years under Greg Collins

March Madness.

It’s nice to have your school be a part of it in any way. It’s been a couple of years since a WKU team was in a postseason tournament.

Last season, WKU’s men’s team lost in the quarterfinals of the Conference USA Tournament, never really being in the running for any postseason play after the middle of January. The Lady Toppers lost five of six to finish 18-12. Perhaps a win or two here or there could have put them in a spot to get in the WNIT’s very lenient field of 64.

This season, the Lady Toppers started out roughly, losing a couple of questionable road games and not capitalizing on the few winnable games early in the season. Before Conference USA play, the Lady Tops stood at 3-6. It certainly seemed ominous, but WKU flipped the switch in C-USA and frankly the poor non-conference performance did not matter. In fact, the tough schedule and the road travel really pulled the team together, and the Lady Tops were able to pull off a second place finish despite a lack of consistent, productive size.

Notes and Nuggets

Lady Tops Make Run in C-USA Tournament

Heading in to Conference USA Tournament, WKU had sputtered a little bit. Despite a three game winning streak, the more telling number may be the 4-3 overall heading into the tournament. WKU got it together and confirmed the two seed with a couple of tough battles in Diddle Arena.

Being the two seed, WKU was the favorite on their side of the bracket. That alone would be helpful, but WKU was handed perhaps the most ideal path to the finals that they could realistically request. Instead of playing 7 seed North Texas, who WKU had split with and had struggled against early in the win on Senior Night in Diddle Arena, 10 seed UAB defeated the Mean Green. WKU would take advantage and win a tight game against the Blazers.

For the next matchup, #3 seed Rice probably would have been a coin flip for the Lady Tops at best. With big bodies and forwards that could serious pressure on WKU’s interior defense, Rice had just recently beaten WKU by 18 in Diddle in late February (WKU did defeat Rice in December). Instead, WKU drew the inferior and better matchup 6 seed UTSA Roadrunners (cue UTSA Twitter freakout because of invisible insult). Instead of having huge bodies down low that could score, UTSA featured a wing that WKU’s long and deep 2-4 position could relatively handle, and consequently, Conference USA Player of the Year Jordyn Jenkins was hampered with foul trouble and WKU cruised to the championship game. The first quarter and a half were fairly tight, but WKU busted it open and didn’t look back, even finding ways to rest starters and try to keep the troops as fresh as possible against MTSU in the finals.

Ladies Struggle vs. #25 MTSU

There’s not much to say here, except the Lady Tops fought against a really good team. MTSU was ranked 25th in the country coming into the game (somehow that apparently translates to an 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament…), and they showed that they were the superior team. WKU battled in the first quarter, shooting terribly and finishing the quarter tied at 15.

MTSU would go on to dominate the rest of the way, outscoring WKU 67-55 in the final 30 minutes of action. WKU was just not able to stop MTSU’s many weapons, and they once again succumbed to the will of the Lady Raiders.

What this Run Meant for WKU

Although Lady Topper hoops is steeped in tradition, not much has happened in the Greg Collins era in terms of chasing a conference championship or really being any kind of player for an NCAA Tournament berth. This was the first year that WKU was a top two seed, and this was the first conference tournament championship appearance in his five years.

Given the fact that WKU was picked sixth and is extremely young without a single senior on the roster, the Lady Tops could run this thing back with about the same crew another year or two if they can keep everybody interested.

This run meant a lot for the Greg Collins era. Getting second in a really strong Conference USA was a huge step in the right direction for Collins, who has overall underwhelmed us in terms of postseason production. He has frankly done just enough to skirt by on a few lackluster seasons. More on that below, but suffice it to say that he could have been in real trouble if he had not done exactly what he did this season.

My personal standard for Collins this year was to get a bye and make it to the semifinals. That felt like a realistic “shoot for this level” type of goal before the season. Picked sixth, WKU was ahead of most of the pack about five games into league play. They would solidify second with a few more wins, and then they would maintain throughout the rest of the conference slate.

However, if WKU had not made some kind of run in the C-USA Tournament, it would have felt like ultimately more of the same, and Collins would have been back in the hot seat. Given his history in the C-USA Tournament (only one win before this year’s two wins), losing early would have been monumentally frustrating, especially given that WKU was handed the easiest road possible.

Making it to the finals was bonus, and beating Middle would have solidified his job for another couple of years, almost no matter what. Now, we have the WNIT. There is no pressure on Collins. He should not feel immense pressure if he lost to Kansas on the road. However, if he does anything but lose to Kansas Friday night, he is gaining some extra bonus points.

Collins Saves His Job

I’m trying to be fair here. This is not to demean Coach Collins, but he was starting to get some serious heat from Lady Topper supporters in November and December. That is a completely fair statement. And he has also received an extension on his contract, something that came into the limelight with the stepping down of Rick Stansbury. With that happening in another sour-ish situation on The Hill in the same sport, there was some ire about both coaches receiving extensions on their contracts.

I honestly can’t say if Greg would have been fired after this season if he had continued on the 3-6 type of pace, but he certainly would have been on the brink of getting canned. Instead, the Lady Tops came together, and it’s got a lot of the skeptics believing Collins is the man to get it done again.

Good for him. He’s a nice man that people (and his players and staff) seem to love. Michelle Clark-Heard seemed to be more of an intense personality that kind of scared her players into being great. Perhaps Greg could actually use a touch of that himself to push this program to the next level, but there’s no question that he is pretty universally liked in and out of the program.

Congratulations to Coach Collins, staff, and players for stepping up and taking a huge step forward a year ahead of schedule. As long as Collins has a good year next year and continues to knock on (or hopefully kick in) the door, he will be kept around. At some point, though, just like Rick Stansbury, he and his team will have to break major ground. But that all comes at a later date.

Lady Tops Play at Kansas Friday at 5 PM

On to the WNIT!

Garnering a top two seed in any conference in women’s basketball almost guarantees a postseason invite of some kind. If the top seed makes it to the NCAA, the two seed gets an autobid into the WNIT. If the two seed wins the conference tournament, obviously they go dancing.

In this case, WKU (19-13, 2nd place C-USA) gets the autobid into the 64 team WNIT field (men’s NIT only takes 32). The fact that they play Kansas, a team that was considered one of the “Last Four In” or so by most publications, barely misses the field. At 19-11 with a .500 Big 12 record, Kansas is a legitimate women’s basketball team that could have won multiple games in the NCAA Tournament if given the opportunity.

They have a 6’6” center (#1 Taiyonna Jackson) that averages 15 and 13 with over 3 blocks per game. They also have five players who average 9.4 or more points, so the Lady Tops will have their hands full. However, WKU is by far the deeper team, consistently playing ten players all season, and we never know exactly who will step up night to night.

If Kansas Wins…

Move on and be thrilled.

This is a terrible matchup for WKU. I’ll be honest: Winning would be a miracle. Maybe they’ll read this and put it up on the board before the game and they’ll win and go on a magical run, but jeez. This matchup might be the worst WKU has faced all season in terms of starting greatness.

I have not studied Kansas deeply, nor will I, frankly. However, it seems like they’ve had some awful injury issues or they would have been even better. It also seems like they need to work on their roster depth, because their starters and a sixth person off of the bench who was injured in January seem to be the only players who significantly contribute.

This is an experienced team, and it’s a team that will be bigger than WKU at every position besides the wing, where WKU could possibly hold its own with multiple players that can play from the 2-4 spots. However, WKU has one player over 6’ tall and Kansas has 3 players under 5’11”, and even those three are no shorter than 5’8”. WKU has two players that get starter kind of minutes (Sivori and Mead) who are three inches shorter than anyone of Kansas’ roster.

Again, if Kansas wins, no big deal and let’s just remembe this season as a great one.

If WKU Wins…

…That would be the single greatest accomplishment in Greg Collins’ tenure, and it would open WKU to…well, actually probably play another huge team from the midwest, this time a team they played early in the season, Missouri.

So the path to a deep run in the WNIT looks bleaker than bleak.

However, if WKU wins just one game, that is gravy, baby. Collins has done enough that the Tops should just be grateful to be playing in the postseason. If he wins, he pulls some real Topper magic and sets himself up to be able to legitimately recruit a big girl in the offseason.

WKU needs to get ready for an important offseason, because they need to keep who they’ve got, but they sure could use a 6’2”+ Ivy Brown, Jasmine Johnson, or Crystal Kelly type of player, or even have another player besides Odeth Betancourt that can hand with some bigger bodies in and out of Conference USA play. If WKU could keep who they’ve got, get them to be more consistent from the floor, and add some size, the Tops could easily take over MTSU for the top spot next year.

Let’s see what happens. Since it’s kind of a weird time on Friday, right as I’m leaving work, we may have trouble live tweeting for much of the game. However, we will do our best and certainly try to cover the Lady Tops like they deserve.

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GO TOPS! BEAT KANSAS.