Lady Toppers: WKU Breaks Three Game Losing Streak Despite Being Shorthanded, Beat La Tech in epic comeback, 64-56

The Lady Topper were down 19 and looking like a train wreck against a bad La Tech team in Diddle Arena Wednesday, but Greg Collins and crew pulled it together and made a remarkable comeback

I’ll just say it: Western looked AWFUL for over half of the game against La Tech Wednesday. I was tweeting for The RedOut Podcast, an account who usually tweets the Lady Toppers when both the men and women are playing.

RedOut is also the longest running WKU podcast and runs generally seasonally every week throughout the athletic year from August to April. If you’ve never listened in, check us out.

But I was tweeting for RedOut and was thoroughly frustrated. During the game, I’m sitting there pretty frustrated with the prospects of it all. WKU has lost three in a row and four out of five. Now, two were excusable, but frankly two were not, and the loss at Sam Houston State was embarrasing and allowed a team without a Division I win in over two months to come back from nearly 20 down with less than eight minutes to play and actually win in overtime. I mean It was a disaster. So tweets like these were kind of my first half go-to. I think anybody observing could have agreed. They just straight-up looked lost and looked like they didn’t really care. So I was half engaged for most of the second and third quarter. I was watching the guys upset La Tech on my phone and sort of paying attention to the game in front of me.

So Listen, I openly admit the issue here, but I think anyone being honest witnessing that putrid first half would agree with me. However, as much as I was frustrated and just “done” with some things with the Lady Tops, the coaching staff and the players found a way to crawl out of what felt hopeless. La Tech was playing good basketball, and WKU just woke up and took it to the Lady Techsters.

Give the coaching staff credit for figuring out how to get them back in the game in all areas, because it was clearly not going well both mentally and physically. Whatever ignited them to end the half and heading into the second is something hopefully the Tops can channel for a while.

WKU did all of this despite Destiny Salary being suspended for a game for violation of team rules (she was present and active on the bench) and Acacia Hayes out indefinitely with a knee injury. It is unknown if Acacia will return, but my impression was that this could be season ending. It may not be, though, and we have put out some feelers to see if we can find more information to be more informed on the situation.

If you happen to know more details on whatever WKU Athletics mystery, feel free to message us and we’ll make sure we’re being accurate.

So WKU overcame adversity and won despite being down its two most explosive players. Without either of them on the court, it took a while for WKU to figure out how to score quickly again. They figured it out and the rest is history.

The Bigger Picture: The Greg Collins Update

I think it’s fair to say that Greg Collins has gotten the Stansbury treatment in many ways. He’s a nice guy, been at WKU for six years, and has never been unlikable and never sustained hideous basketball over multiple seasons. When Western does fail, it always seems to have a good reason why and it’s generally acceptable but not exceptional. The lone difference between Stansbury and Collins was that Collins took over a winning program that had just been to the tournament a ton. Stansbury was handed zero guards and a scandal. If Western fans were ready to run Stansbury out, shouldn’t Greg Collins be feeling the heat given he’s done less with way more?

That being said, heading into this season, Collins had really executed one of his better coaching jobs, getting the Lady Tops to overachieve to a high standing and a championship appearance against Middle Tennessee in 2022-2023. That was probably the ceiling for that team, even if Paul Sanderford or Michelle Clark-Heard or whoever was coaching. Middle had a great team and was ranked. Even if Western had been a top 50 team, they still would have had extreme trouble with getting past Middle.

Greg Collins got himself a little grace heading into this season, although it’s certainly time for a coach that took over a program that was in great shape with little transition to new coaching style or style of play to produce something great. He had put together a roster despite a couple of alarming transfers. WKU looked really good heading into CUSA, and even started 3-0. Since then, until Wednesday night, the Lady Toppers had really been playing terrible basketball, losing four of five and only two of those five were to really good teams.

Western probably should have gone 3-2 or better in its last five and not had a one point comeback victory against a team well under .500 on the year to keep it from a 5-game losing streak.

I think it’s fair to point out that Greg Collins should be receiving heat at this point once again. At six years, how long does it take? It’s awful to lose Acacia Hayes, but WKU can be quite good without her. WKU had a winning record without Destiny Salary before she was approved by the NCAA to play several games into the season.

Now, let’s also be fair and say this recent game was a small feather in the cap for Collins and staff. Despite everything, the Tops got it done in impossible fashion.

Who knows where WKU stands on this, and who knows where Todd Stewart and Timothy Caboni land on the subject, as well? However, this team has the choice to move forward with whoever and be really good and compete for a championship, or they can fall asleep, go through the motions and end up around .500 in conference and fade into oblivion for the year. Whatever happened before now matters not.

Hopefully, the Lady Toppers realize how good they could be, they pull themselves together, get rid of the drama, and go out and go toe-to-toe with Middle and FIU the rest of the year and let’s see where the chips fall.