WKU Basketball: Three Questions Ahead of WKU vs. UAB

Raise your hand if you thought the Tops would be perfect in C-USA play five games in, and have the opportunity to sit all alone at the top…

Raise your hand if you thought the Tops would be perfect in C-USA play five games in, and have the opportunity to sit all alone at the top of the conference by week’s end.

Put your hand down, you filthy liar.

No one could have predicted this start for WKU, especially in the conference portion of the year, and that’s part of what has made this so fun. Well, it’s now time for a bit of a death stretch, as the Tops have UAB and MTSU staring them square in the face for this week, and we’re going to learn a ton about what WKU is after this week.

And, hopefully, we’ll stop saying that refrain because it feels like we’ve been saying it all year.

Anyway, here are three of the biggest questions I have as we head into the matchup against the Blazers.

Can Chris Cokley be stopped?

Chris Cokley is their everything man. He leads the team in points (17.8) and rebounds (9.2) per game, and he’s been nearly better in conference play (19 points, 8.4 boards a night). It isn’t just the “base” metrics either — he leads the team in points per 100 minutes (36.4) and is one of just two Blazers with over 200 points produced (the same metric we used a couple of weeks ago to crown Darius Thompson the main source of offense for the Tops).

Cokely is by no stretch the only place the Blazers can look for performance, but he is the main cog in the machine. The Tops need to not only worry about stopping him, but also make sure they don’t get burned elsewhere.

What will Josh Anderson look like in first home game?

Anderson was cleared before the Tops’ road swing began, with his first game coming against Marshall where he scored 16 points and added four rebounds and an assist off the bench in the Tops’ blowout victory.

Since that point, he’s struggled a bit. He was unable to grab a feel for the game in Norfolk, scoring no points in 19 minutes against ODU and was plagued with foul trouble in Charlotte despite finishing with nine points in 12 minutes.

The Diddle faithful will be pumped to see him play in person, and I wonder if that home crowd will feed him to perform like he did against Marshall. Granted, JA still (probably) isn’t quite in game condition, but if he shows even flashes of what he did against Marshall, he’s gonna give the Diddle crowd plenty to cheer for, and should be on his way to being the JA we all hoped we’d be seeing all year.

Speaking of the Diddle crowd, my final question is,

Will the Diddle Arena crowd make a difference?

One of my favorite WKU memories was being in Diddle Arena at the end of the 2011/12 season when the Tops beat MTSU in Ray Harper’s pimped-out red suit. That may have been — along with the sold out homecoming crowd against ULM — one of the best crowds I’ve been in.

Let’s be real — the Tops had no business winning that game. Granted, it was part of that seven-game win streak, and propelled them into four wins in four days in the Sun Belt tournament, but WKU had no business beating Middle that night.

Except for the crowd.

For the life of me I cannot seem to find an attendance number, but you know what, the harder I look, the more I realize that didn’t matter. The crowd was into it, the Tops’ fed off of it, and they won.

I’m expecting the same on Thursday. Sure, it’s a nationally televised game (however barely, with it being a CBS Sports Network game) and it’s something of a rivalry with UAB, but if it’s a packed house but it’s library silent, it isn’t going to matter.

I’m expecting a raucous, loud, exceptional crowd on Thursday, and if WKU does win — especially close — it’ll be because of that.

How do you think these questions will be answered? What questions do you have coming into the matchup? Let us know on our brand new forum.