WKU Basketball: One Big Thing Before The Hilltoppers Tip-Off In the Northern Classic
We're playin' basketball, eh, north of the border over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Pack your passports, a toque and some gloves maybe? The Hilltoppers are headed across the border for a good ol’ multi-team event in Montreal (well, about a 30 minute ride from Montreal) before the last month of conference play commences.
While we’re used to seeing the Tops play in Feast Week tournaments, this is a little bit of a different set up: A true “event” as opposed to a tournament, with all matchups and times pre-determined.
WKU’s schedule this week is as follows.
Friday vs. Bowling Green State | 6 p.m. CT
Saturday vs. Canisius | 1 p.m. CT
Sunday vs. UNC Asheville | 10 a.m. CT
Games will be live-streamed through a for-pay service. I don’t know what service, as of publication, or what the rate is. As soon as we do, we’ll let you know on our Twitter page.
Riding a two-game winning streak, WKU will aim to sweep their Canadian competition, set up a showdown with Campbellsville next week before December kicks into full gear and the meat of the non-con schedule hits.
With games every day this weekend, we’re not going to take a game-by-game preview (we’ll almost assuredly provide daily matchup thoughts over on our Twitter account). Instead, we’re using this edition of One Big Thing to tell you what we’ll be looking for throughout the entire event, all three games, as Steve Lutz’s rag-tag crew continues to gel together.
Fletcher Keel - Perimeter Pressure
It feels like a troubling trend is on the horizon for the Hilltoppers: It isn’t much of a problem yet, but if it isn’t addressed soon, it could become one: WKU’s three-point defense.
While Murray State didn’t have a terrific shooting day (going just 8-23 from three), they were afforded plenty of open looks in which the Hilltopper defense was a couple of steps too late to getting to the defender, if they even got there at all.
Against Kentucky State, the Thorobreds started the day 5-7 from deep, and finished with 33 of their 75 points (44%) came from beyond the arc. Some of that is just good shooting and, while I wasn’t able to watch the game, from what Steve Lutz said afterwards, and if I asked those of you who were, I’d suspect the three-point defense again was lackluster.
Poor perimeter defense was a hallmark of the late-stage Stansbury era (and a rather triggering one at that) and, as said above, it’s yet to be detrimental to an outcome so far this year. If Lutz can make the proper adjustment and keep a hand in the face of would-be three shooters, I feel confident in WKU’s chances to run the table in Montreal.
Matt McCay - Look Like the Team that Caught Our Attention
Although it wasn’t televised and not tons of people (3,411) actually saw Saturday’s game against Kentucky State (Or, if they did, they probably didn’t see the entire game, a camp I fall into), it’s hard to really digest the Tops’ 20-point win over the Thoroughbreds.
However, what was absolutely clear and what Coach Lutz said in his interviews was, “If we had played a team from Conference USA tonight, we probably lose.”
My big thing for this tournament is for WKU to just show us the same intensity we saw the first three games and not this last one against KSU. They were sleepwalking Saturday. Period. That was a Rick Stansbury, Ray Harper, Ken McDonald type of sleepy effort. Ultimately, it was one game against a DII school that you beat by 20. It’s not panic time, but let’s see the energy level at a 15 out of 10, and Topper Nation will be absolutely drooling for this team to return to Diddle, regardless of the scoreboard.
Jake Gary - Bring Home Some Hardware
One big think im looking for out of Western Kentucky in this early season tournament is a trophy hoist. It’s a fairly winnable tournament for WKU against teams that are known for making to the NCAA tournament, it feels like UNC Asheville, Wofford and Lipscomb are always in at a low seed somewhere anyway.
If this program wants to compete for a tournament spot, now is a perfect time to do it. Show that you can win this tournament, and the fan base will be all in on the capability to win CUSA. Because I look at these teams, and look at CUSA, the competition is pretty similar. So WKU just needs to go and grind the wins out. Starting with Bowling Green, who I hope the Tops can deliver to them their third-straight near-20 point loss.
ed. note - as mentioned above, this isn’t your classic Feast Week “tournament” but there could still be a trophy handed out to the team with the best record?