Lady Tops Pass First and Only Preseason Test

The Western Kentucky Lady Toppers handled Lindsey Wilson College Tuesday night in Diddle Arena, 84-61.

Preseason is the preseason.

There’s not much you can glean from a box score, because players who won’t play get significant minutes and semi-injured players (AKA Mya Meredith) that will likely start sometimes get told to “sit out for this one”.

Underclassman Mya Meredith was injured late last season. Meredith had been C-USA Freshman of the Week several times and seemed the stone cold favorite to win the Freshman of the Year Award. Somehow, she STILL won that award despite missing the final eight games of the season.

Meredith, WKU’s most important piece—simply because there wasn’t a viable backup with her skill set—goes down with a season ending knee injury. WKU would “do it for Mya” for a few games, showing a lot of grit, but would ultimately be a non-factor in the C-USA Tournament, losing by double digits to UAB in their first game of the tournament.

Flash forward to the present, and sources say Mya is inching closer to ready to play status. Will she play in the season opener against Vanderbilt in Diddle Arena Monday at 7 PM on ESPN+?

That’s a great question. Sources close to the program say she is participating in most drills in practice, although she didn’t even dress Tuesday night against LWC.

The players that suited up actually looked like a pretty good squad, even without Meredith. WKU lost a few pieces from last year, but the only top seven scorer lost is leading scorer Meral Abdelgawad, who had legitimately blossomed into one of the best pure scorers in Conference USA.

Her presence will be missed, but the Lady Tops have 2-7 on the scoring chart back, and WKU’s future looks really bright if they can just hang around another year or two.

WKU’s roster reminds me a lot of the Tashia Brown, Ivy Brown, Kendall Noble, and Micah Jones rosters of the Michelle Clark-Heard era. They have good to great size at all positions but center, and they create havoc on defense, pressing most of the game with a variety of 2/3 to 3/4 court pressure looks.

Here’s a difference, though:

Mya Meredith is a true low post threat with a ton of potential to be a more physical Ivy Brown, and Alexis Mead is a true point guard that can cut into the paint and wreak all kinds of havoc on both ends.

In contrast, the Lady Tops of recent yesteryear were loaded with guards and wings who could shoot and score. Ivy Brown was more of a high post threat with an all-court game. She brought something different, and really all of those Lady Topper greats were generally very nice people that played pretty basketball. WKU has that, but they also have two pieces the Lady Tops didn’t. This team also has a little “nasty” to it. I sense an attitude throughout the roster that you don’t want to mess with these girls. They’re not classless or trashy, but there’s definitely a little “something extra” with how this group plays.

It’s an interesting trajectory to see how this pans out, but if Greg Collins can keep the Lady Tops together, watch out.

Oh, did I neglect to mention the leading scorer? My bad.

True freshman. From Murfreesboro. Sister of Anastasia Hayes and Aislynn Hayes of MTSU. Stolen from Rick “Short Stuff” Insell (I call him Inbred, if you will). Meet Acacia Hayes. A finalist for Tennessee Miss Basketball her junior year, word has it she had zero interest in playing for the angry elf who thinks he’s top shelf. Hayes’ sisters transferred the heck out of Murfreesboro directly after appearing in the NCAA Tournament in 2022.

Yikes, Rick! With all due respect, maybe tone down the douchebaggery, Mr. Keebler.

Acacia Hayes, the captivating Lady Topper freshman, had 22 points, four rebounds, and four steals in her debut. She was really impressive, getting in the lane and to the cup, as well. She plays hard and she’s certainly talented like her sisters, and she actually picked the right school.

Macey Blevins (19) and Hope Sivori (10) joined Hayes in double digits. WKU led all but the first 3.5 minutes. At 6:29 left in the first half, Western took its first lead at 6-5 and never looked back.

The Lady Tops did allow LWC to drain a couple of threes and a couple of free throws to start the second half, cutting it down quickly to 11 right out of the break. However, WKU rebounded nicely, putting them back down 17 within a few minutes and never allowing the lead to shrink down into the teens the entire rest of the game.

When checking off your boxes for an elimination game, it pretty much checked all of the boxes:

• Did you win?

• Did you struggle?

• Were there glimpses of good basketball?

• Could this team have some depth?

• Can this team improve significantly?

• Does the team seem to care and play hard for each other?

Perhaps the only box that wasn’t checked was a huge blowout win, but Lindsey Wilson was a quality NAIA school last year, making the national tournament with a winning record during the regular season. And WKU held as much as a 27 point lead.

Without Mya Meredith, to control the game from start to finish is a nice checkbox.

But again, it means virtually nothing and tells us virtually nothing, except we know there are some good players on this team, and it seems like some of the additions will contribute significantly.

WKU starts its season off with a bang against Vanderbilt at home on Monday at 7:00. Vanderbilt was 16-19 last season, making it to the Sweet 16 of the WNIT. A decent team that one would think probably should handle WKU, especially if Mya Meredith is not able to go, this is not a game out of WKU’s reach.

What could perhaps end up being WKU’s Achilles heel, height, may not be an extreme disadvantage as one would expect in women’s college basketball when comparing a mid-major roster to an SEC opponent. However, Vanderbilt only has one player over 6’2”, and that is a freshman, Amauri Williams, although she is considered a four star recruit and a top ten post talent for the class of 2022.

Vanderbilt does not play an exhibition game, so they hop straight into the fire against a WKU team that already has some preseason jitters out of the way. We’ll see if Vanderbilt comes out ready to pummel WKU, or if the Lady Tops are game and put on a show in front of what will hopefully be a 2,000+ person crowd Monday night.

The Lady Tops may not be your priority, BUT I’m telling you, watch out for this team. They’re good, and they deserve butts in seats. Make it a point to go see the Lady Tops this season.