On Wednesday afternoon, Western Kentucky volleyball coach Travis Hudson was watching film of recruits, and the Lady Topper players were debating designs for their conference championship rings.

It was business as usual for the program after perhaps the best season in school history.

“We’ve had some awfully good teams, some awfully good years here, but when you look at it on paper, it’ll have to go down as the best team that’s ever laced them up here at Western Kentucky,” Hudson said. “To get to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, beat a Pac-12 opponent in the first round, win the regular-season title, win the tournament title and have an RPI of 13 – I think that’s what’s most remarkable. 

“I think I could coach here for 40 more years, and I don’t know that we would ever put a 13 up there in the RPI. It’s almost a perfect year.”

Almost perfect. 

The Lady Tops’ season ended Saturday with a sweep at the hands of No. 13 overall seed and host BYU, but that didn’t tarnish a 32-4 campaign that included an outright Conference USA regular-season title and a second straight tournament crown.

“Usually I’m in a funk for about a week after a season’s over, and I’ve been good,” Hudson said. “I’ve been really at peace since this one’s been over because I really feel like our kids gave everything they had, and I feel like we got about everything out of this year we could.”

WKU had its chances early against BYU and hung tight until the very end of the first set with neither team able to stop the other.

The Lady Tops led 13-11 in the second set before they “lost our rhythm offensively,” Hudson said.

“You go in the NCAA Tournament trying to decide who the best team is, and BYU was better than us that day, for sure,” he said. “They played for the national championship last year and returned a good portion of that team. They had just a couple players that we really had no answer for.”

Hudson said he told the players in the locker room that their chances of reaching the program’s first Sweet 16 were diminished with their draw.

The Lady Tops swept Arizona in the first round and then ran into a buzzsaw against BYU on its home court in Provo, Utah. Hudson was vocal from the moment the draw was announced that he felt WKU should have hosted, or at least been closer to home.

“Quite bluntly, we deserved a much better draw than we received in this tournament,” he said.

But that ending didn’t sour things for the Lady Toppers, including their three seniors, Noelle Langenkamp, Haley Bodway and Rachel Engle.

“This has been my favorite year by far, and not because it’s my senior year, but because I love this team,” Langenkamp said.

WKU returns several key pieces for next season, including current junior Georgia O’Connell, sophomores Jessica Lucas, Alyssa Cavanaugh and Sydney Engle, and freshman Rachel Anderson.

Hudson said the team’s starting rotation will be a “high-level group,” but he’s still considering ways to improve depth.

“Every year, Western volleyball will be a contender in the tournament,” Langenkamp said. “We’re losing some pieces, but the girls we have work really hard, and I think the gap will be filled.”

Hudson said while many coaches bask in gameday, he lives “for spring and offseason training and trying to help these kids grow.”

That process begins all over again now, but perhaps with a higher ceiling on expectations.

Hudson said he’ll never reach a point where he doesn’t savor conference championships, but the idea of multiple NCAA wins seems more real.

“I think we blew some of the ceiling out this year, in terms of what we can do,” he said. “We’ve just got to keep putting ourselves in that position. … We’ve got to keep knocking on that door. Ultimately, breaking through to that Sweet 16 is obviously the next step for us, but I also know how incredibly difficult it is to win championships here and get to NCAAs here. I’ll never take that step of it for granted.”

— Follow Assistant Sports Editor Zach Greenwell on Twitter at twitter.com/zach_greenwell or visit bgdailynews.com.