Lady Tops: Lady Toppers Finish 7-4 in Non-Conference, Head into C-USA Play Tonight with Confidence

WKU plays Southern Miss and La Tech at home Thursday and Saturday

The Western Kentucky Lady Toppers are incredibly young and lost what would be a legendary player if said legendary player had been on some good teams. Unfortunately for Raneem Elgedawy, that wasn’t the case.

Regardless, she’s moved on from WKU, and as what happens quite often in big time college sports these days, the Lady Toppers have a roster with all new faces.

One would think they would struggle, but WKU’s extreme youth has brought on tons of enthusiasm and WKU sits at a very respectable 7-4 heading into conference play. Western faced a few tough foes, but mostly the Lady Tops really faced a schedule that was still challenging for the young team but also winnable. And the strategy has paid off with a good looking team with a lot of pieces that is really deep.

Unlike the Western men, who are lucky to go seven deep on any night, Greg Collins goes a true 11 deep, with ten of those players getting at least nine minutes per game. But he has played 11 players in all 11 games and they all should be feeling confident with some experience heading into C-USA play.

Western does get the unenviable task of starting against the two teams in the C-USA West Division with the best non-conference records in that division. USM and La Tech are both 8-3 on the year, with some decent opponents played. Nothing stands out with either team as a spectacular, mind-boggling win, but with both teams being 8-3 and traditionally pretty good C-USA teams, WKU would be extremely fortunate to win both games in Diddle Arena, starting with a 6:30 PM tilt tonight in Diddle.

To show how much the Lady Toppers have improved, WKU needs exactly one win to surpass its win total from last season. The Lady Tops were 7-16 last season and will surely come close to .500 or better this season.

WKU’s leaders are the surprising Meral Abdelgawad, who has fully blossomed into the player Topper fans thought she could be. She’s now playing extremely hard on both ends of the floor and is the clear leader of this team at over 18 points per game and 8.4 rebounds per game. If she could clean up her turnovers, she could be even better. Meral is 33 points from eclipsing 1,000 for her career.

Perhaps the greatest reason for WKU’s success this season has to be the three point defense. WKU is allowing just 25% from three point land. Clearly this is an emphasis for the Lady Tops. With a ton of young, energetic athletes, perhaps defensive aggressiveness is a great play for this roster.

Western plays a relentless full-court defense, something they have actually ramped up from the Michelle Clark-Heard (and up to this point the Greg Collins) era. The Lady Tops would play a 2/3 court 1-2-2 trap, but now WKU gets after the opponent, picking them up full court a majority of the time.

This is a team to watch. With them being so young, watch for them to get exponentially better during the year. Some of the pieces have not shown their full potential, and even some of the known pieces (i.e. Hope Sivori) have not remotely produced as expected.

Watch for the Lady Toppers, and go to some games. They’re playing good basketball. Check them out tonight at 6:30 and 2 PM Saturday.