In the eyes of Western Kentucky women’s basketball coach Mary Taylor Cowles, Texas Tech is more than a good test.

“They’re incredible,” Cowles said. “They’re really big, but they’re just really talented. They’ve got scorers all over their team.”

The Lady Toppers (3-8), coming off a 10-day break, visit No. 15 Texas Tech at 7 p.m. tonight.

The Lady Raiders (9-0) have started their season undefeated, most recently pulling out a 70-64 win Saturday at Illinois. WKU is still in search of its first true road win of the year.

“They’re very strong rebounding, and they’ll extend the pressure into the full court,” Cowles said. “We’ve got to box out and not let them have second- and third-chance opportunities. And like always, we’ve got to take care of the basketball.”

Through eight games, senior center Kierra Mallard was averaging 14.9 points and 10.5 rebounds for Texas Tech. Junior guard Casey Morris was averaging 10.9 points, while junior guard Monique Smalls averaged 8.1 points with 42 assists and six turnovers.

The Lady Raiders were outrebounding their opponents by an average of 18 boards per game.

“A popular name on their team is Kierra Mallard, and what a great job she does,” Cowles said. “But she’s so well complemented. Those young ladies have kind of grown up together, and they’re playing very confident, smart basketball.”

WKU has been off for more than a week since playing four games in seven days. The Lady Toppers ended that stretch with a 65-48 win at home Dec. 11 over Florida International.

The win gave them a 1-0 start in Sun Belt Conference play, as well as some added confidence heading into Christmas break.

“It was a lot of positive energy in practice this week,” Cowles said. “We needed that win to open conference play, especially that early in the season. It was good that it was against such a good opponent. We know how good FIU can be, but we can’t rest on that now.”

The Lady Toppers have been taking advantage of extra time with classes out of session, Cowles said, including running through specific game situations.

“We just have more time to get everything done now,” she said. “We’ll do some two-a-days, we’ll watch more film, we’ll get more shots up, but we don’t really do anything different.”

Tonight’s game will be a homecoming of sorts for several players. Five Lady Toppers – one-third of the roster – hail from Texas.

WKU is injury free, except for freshman guard Danay Fothergill, who still hasn’t returned since breaking a bone in her foot in late November.

But now’s the perfect time for the team to rest up and keep putting in the work, Cowles said.

“Now they’ve got about five weeks with no school and no class,” she said. “It’s just an opportunity to get in the gym and work on things. We have to take advantage of that extra time.”