Monday Musings: Are We Underestimating What the Hilltoppers Can Do in 2023?
The Hilltoppers are near unanimous favorites to win C-USA in 2023 and, yet, it feels like we're not talking enough about what they could accomplish.
The expectations for Western Kentucky head of the 2023 season are high. Yet, I keep having the feeling that they’re not quite high enough. Is it possible we are underrating just how good this year’s Hilltopper team can be?
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News to use regarding WKU, Conference USA and the collegiate athletic landscape as a whole.
Preseason preview season is rolling on as we enter the waning days of June (already!), and Phil Steele, maybe the most notable preseason previewer, has 13 Hilltoppers on his preseason All-CUSA team, including six on the first team. Hold onto this thought, because it’s at the crux of our main musing this morning.
Two weeks ago, it was four-star Georgia quarterback Jakhari Williams who listed the Hilltoppers in his Top 5. This past week, it was a different preps QB prospect who committed to the Tops in Spring, Texas’ Tucker Parks. WKU was the only FBS program to offer Parks, according to 247Sports, with the Tops edging out Austin Peay, Columbia and Mercer for his services.
Austin Reed is heading to the Manning Passing Academy.
Emmanuel Akot had his second pre-draft workout this cycle, showing the Atlanta Hawks what he has to offer.
After a whirlwind couple of weeks of players leaving the WKU baseball program, Marc Rardin secured the commitment of a Power pitcher in Jacob Bimbi. With Tennessee this year, the Illinois native tossed 13.2 innings and allowed nine runs, with six of those runs coming over his last 1.1 innings of work (three total appearances).
Last year, it was Lucky Jackson who tore things up for the D.C. Defenders. This year, maybe it'll be Kaleb Oliver making a name for himself on the other side of the ball, after his selection in this weekend’s XFL Draft that I totally knew happened before folks tagged us with the results.
The WKU football team is teasing…something. An astute reply mentions that the stripe design is that of the late-90s to early-2000s stacked “WKU” helmet and, if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a tease to a new helmet as well. We kept waiting for the team to rock something last year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 2002 national championship, maybe they were waiting until the trophy could drink before doing so. The biggest eye-raiser for me is the use of the logo in the tweet - it isn’t the towel, current or retro or other, but the academic Tower W logo that the team has worn as the front bumper for a bit now.
San Diego State is leaving the Mountain West for…well, that’s unclear, as of now. Long tied to the Pac 12 and reportedly have begun conversations with the Big 12, the Aztecs informed the MWC that they plan to leave in order to position themselves for when one of those conferences come calling. While it isn’t a guarantee that this will directly impact the Hilltoppers, there’s always the chance that WKU will feel the ripple effects. The most plausible, in my mind? The MWC reaches out to UTEP to bring them aboard and backfill SDSU’s departure, putting the conference back at 12 members. From there, any possible WKU-specific movement would then come from what the conference that adds SDSU does next, if that is in fact where we are heading. Would the Pac 12 bring them and, say, SMU in as a tandem to bring them back to 12 members? In that case, is WKU on the list of calls the AAC would make? There’s no shortage of guesses as to how this could impact things on the Hill, but as of now with the concrete information there is right now, that’s all it is - guesses.
Is History Soon in the Making?
Never in WKU’s FBS history was there so much hype surrounding the program as there was ahead of the 2015 season. 2014 was a disappointing one. With a blown game at Illinois and disappointing performances against UAB and FAU, the Hilltoppers were 2-4 heading into the final weekend of October before something clicked.
Starting with a 66-51 win over Old Dominion (still one of the most bonkers football games, at any level, I’ve ever seen), the Tops went on to win six of their last seven games, with the lone loss a 59-10 dismantling at the hands of Louisiana Tech. That winning stretch also included the game that launched the Moonshine Throwdown, when WKU went into Marshall and thundered the 19th-ranked Herd, as well as maybe WKU’s most memorable bowl game to date, when they nearly blew a 42-14 halftime lead to Central Michigan in the Bahamas Bowl, and would have lost the game if the end zone had been 10 yards deep instead of eight.
Blown lead aside, the spirits were high entering 2015, and so were the expectations. Athlon, Bill Connelly and C-USA media members were just some of the many places where the Tops were predicted to win the East division, if not the whole dang thing.
Still scarred from the defensive lapses of the previous year, I urged experts and media members alike to “pump the brakes” on the Hilltoppers ahead of 2015 because it felt like we were going from “this team could be great” to “this team will be great” before toe met leather.
Well, history proved me a fool.
The 2015 team went on to be arguably the best team in the Tops’ FBS history, losing only two games - both at power opponents - and sweeping through the C-USA schedule with relative ease, winning by an average margin of 26 points, en route to earning the program’s first ever AP Top 25 ranking.
It’s with this history in mind that I can’t stop thinking about this upcoming year’s team and if they could rival 2015’s squad in what heights they can reach and if we’re actually underrating what Tyson Helton will roll out starting on Sept. 2.
First of all, the stars seem to be aligning in a similar way from a schedule/conference make up point of view. 2015 was the first year without UAB after their football program was egregiously disbanded and the first year with Charlotte as they began their FBS transition. 2023 will be the first without, well, all of the AAC leavers on WKU’s schedule and the first with four overall newcomers, including two FBS transitioners.
The schedule is far less grueling as well. 2015 saw three P5 games, one of which was a win and one of which should have been a win, while the 2023 schedule has just one power matchup - at Ohio State - and a pretty navigable non-conference slate. I’m not saying it’s written in stone the Hilltoppers will only lose one game this year, but it’s not hard to see a world where that is, in fact, the case.
Of all of the reasons I think we could be under-estimating what WKU can do this year, this is the biggest one: This year’s WKU team has more members on Phil Steele’s preseason all-conference team (14) than did appear in 2015 (12), a list that included names such as Brandon Doughty, Jared Dangerfield, Forerst Lamp, Nick Holt, Leon Allen, Taywan Taylor and Tyler Higbee make appearances.
There is, of course, no guarantee that members of this year’s all-conference squad - the likes of Austin Reed, Malachi Corley, Jaques Evans, Dalvin Smith, Upton Stout, Davion Ervin-Poindexter, etc. - will go down as some of the names in WKU’s history, but a 2015-esque season would go a long way in etching their names in a similar spot.
If my hypothesis is to be proved correct will hinge on the statistical improvement of Reed, and Doughty left a perfect roadmap for what that can look like.
In 2014, Doughty threw for 4,830 yards and 49 touchdowns, completing 67.9% of his passes (552 attempts). In 2015, he jumped to produce the best year by a non-Zappe quarterback in history, throwing for 5,055 yards and 48 touchdowns, completing 71.9% of his passes.
Despite throwing for fewer yards and for less overall accuracy, Reed was right on 2014 Doughty’s heels, throwing for 4,746 yards and 40 touchdowns, completing 64.5% of his 603 passing attempts. If Reed can flirt with throwing for 5,000 yards, I’d imagine the WKU offense will be close to unstoppable.
2023 will not be without its obstacles: The book is well out on Malachi Corley. Will he be able to be as effective as the YAC King with teams knowing what’s coming? What about who will step up as WR2 behind Corley? Or what about how the Tops will fare against a team like Troy, who they fell to by a touchdown at home last week and now have to face them on the road this year?
Excitement is building ahead of this season but a lot of it seems focused solely on the fact that Reed and Corley are returning for 2023. Which is, itself, worth celebrating! But this team has the potential to be much, much deeper and be one that can be a joy to watch week in and week out. While I don’t want to set expectations too high, I do think we are on the cusp of seeing something special.