Western Kentucky players celebrate their 67-56 win over Southern Miss in the Conference USA Women’s Basketball Tournament championship game Saturday at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – It’s no longer good enough for Western Kentucky to win only a Conference USA championship. Michelle Clark-Heard has built the Lady Topper basketball program into a consistent conference tournament champion with three titles in the last five years.

Now it’s time for WKU (27-6) to show what it’s got in the NCAA Tournament. So far under coach Heard, the Lady Toppers are 0-2 on that national stage.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment,” Heard said after WKU beat Southern Mississippi 67-56 in the C-USA tournament championship Saturday at Legacy Arena.

WKU will learn its fate at 6 p.m. Monday during the Women’s NCAA Tournament Selection Show on ESPN. The Lady Toppers will hold a watch party at High Tops starting at 5:30 p.m.

There aren’t many things WKU isn’t doing well as it seems to keep getting stronger deeper into the postseason. The Lady Toppers have won 12 straight games and became the first team in C-USA Tournament history to win all its tournament games by double digits.

WKU was picked in the preseason to win the league and fulfilled every expectation by going 19-2 against C-USA opponents to claim the regular season and tournament championship.

Winning that gives WKU an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, which will be its third trip since 2014. Before then, WKU hadn’t been to the tournament since 2008.

“It’s kind of the expectation for our program now,” junior Ivy Brown said. “We’ve had a really good five years since coach Heard has been here, so we hold ourselves to high expectations and we did it. We definitely want to win a game in the NCAA. That’s our ultimate goal.”

As of Monday morning, ESPN women’s basketball bracketologist Charlie Creme has predicted WKU as a 12-seed playing 5-seed DePaul in Lexington.

WKU hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2000, but came close to an upset of No. 5 seed Texas in the 2015 tournament in Berkeley, Calif. The 12th-seeded Lady Toppers led by as much as eight points in the second half before the Longhorns’ size proved too much to overcome. Alexis Govan’s potential game-winning 3-pointer bounced off the rim in the 66-64 first-round loss.

“We still have that taste in our mouth from Texas,” Heard said. “It’s just that game was right there when we were in California and we want to get to the NCAA and we want to win. That’s our whole objective from this day forth – after we celebrate a little more.”

WKU was a 15-seed in its first NCAA Tournament trip under Heard and lost to second-seed Baylor in Waco, Texas, 87-74.

WKU was greeted at E. A. Diddle Arena on Sunday afternoon by a host of fans congratulating them on another conference championship. The celebrations will continue up until WKU’s name appears on the bracket and their first-round opponent is determined for the tournament that begins on Friday.

Winning one game in the NCAA Tournament would add another benchmark to the program, but the Lady Toppers are playing with a confidence that suggests one may not be enough.

“Our goal is to win games in the NCAA Tournament,” Noble said. “We haven’t done that yet. We’re going to focus on it and go back to work this week and see where we end up and whatever happens, happens I guess.”{&end}