The stakes continue to rise for Western Kentucky’s football team.

With just three Conference USA games left on the regular-season schedule, the Hilltoppers remain very much in control of their own destiny – keep winning, and a spot in the CUSA championship on Dec. 6 is assured.

WKU enters Saturday’s 11 a.m. homecoming matchup against Louisiana Tech tied for first in the CUSA standings with a spotless 5-0 mark in league play. But this final stretch may well be the toughest part of the season for WKU (7-2 overall, 5-0 CUSA) starting with the Bulldogs, then a road game against defending conference champion Liberty on Nov. 23 before wrapping up with CUSA co-leader Jacksonville State back at Houchens-Smith Stadium.

“This is where you want to be this time of year,” WKU coach Tyson Helton said. “Every week is a big game. It makes for good football. I need our fans to show up and show out. I know it’s an earlier game, 11 o’clock kick and all that, but we need to have a great atmosphere out there. These are the games that you want to be in and this is what makes college football great and exciting.

“ … Really excited about being back home. We get to come back home for homecoming and a really good opponent that we’re going to play in Louisiana Tech. They had a great game last week against Jacksonville State, hard-fought game, so this time of year you’ve got to be playing your best football because we’re about to hit a stretch where we play some really good football teams and that starts with Louisiana Tech. They do a really good job, so we’ve got to have a championship mentality about ourselves.”

Louisiana Tech (3-6, 2-4 CUSA) has lost two straight after last Saturday’s 44-37 overtime defeat to visiting Jacksonville State. The Bulldogs rallied back in that game with 23 unanswered points before Jax State scored a last-second touchdown to force overtime and ultimately win.

The Bulldogs are the top team in total defense (312 yards per game allowed), top rushing defense (120.8 yards) and second-best pass defense (191.2 yards) in CUSA.

“This team is really good on defense,” WKU offensive coordinator Will Friend said of Louisiana Tech. “You put the tape on and they do great. When you put the tape on and watch a team on defense, the first thing that jumps out at you is they tackle well, and then the next thing is they play hard, and they don’t line up and don’t give you any gifts by alignment. To me, that’s just a well-coached defensive football team with good players and I think it’ll be the biggest challenge.

“It’ll be the best defense we’ve played all year, with the exception of maybe Alabama, but they are really, really good, so we’re going to have to have a great week of preparation for this ball game.”

WKU redshirt sophomore quarterback Caden Veltkamp, who Helton said will remain the starter even with TJ Finley back from an injury suffered in the third game, is expecting a tough challenge from the Bulldogs.

“The DBs can cover, the front seven is really good – they stop the run really well, and like I said their DBs are really good in coverage,” Veltkamp said. “So we’re definitely going to have to win one-on-ones and we have to understand what they’re playing because they do a really good job of disguising what they’re doing.”

With Veltkamp at the controls, the Tops have been CUSA’s best passing offense (280.8 yards per game), third in total offense (408.8 yards per game) and scoring offense (30.3 points per game).

“It starts with him as the triggerman,” Louisiana Tech coach Sonny Cumbie said of Veltkamp. “He throws the football down the field – I think he’s completing nearly 70% of his passes, very accurate. He’s athletic. He’s a 6-6, 220-pound kid, sees the field really well. And I think they have really the best receiving corps in our league. And from that standpoint, we’ll have a different challenge in terms that they throw the football about as well as anyone that we’ve played.”

WKU junior linebacker Anthony Brackenridge, who forced a fumble as part of a five-turnover performance for the Tops’ defense in last week’s 41-28 win at New Mexico State, said the team is focused on the immediate challenge of beating Louisiana Tech.

“Of course that’s our goal – a championship,” Brackenridge said. “But it’s game by game, play by play, step by step.”

QUICK STARTERS

WKU’s opening-drive touchdown against New Mexico State continued a positive trend. The Hilltoppers have scored touchdowns on their first drive in three straight games and have come up with points on the first drive in five games this season.

Against the Aggies, that first drive took four plays to cover 70 yards as Veltkamp connected with redshirt sophomore wide receiver Easton Messer on a 54-yard touchdown pass.

“We script it out,” Friend said. “The main thing is we’ve had a stretch where guys have done a really good job and the coaches have done a really good job the last couple days of the week of getting guys prepared for them and they’ve made plays on those drives. We talked about one of our goals going into the game last week was start fast like we’ve been doing, but we needed to start fast in both halves. We haven’t done that. We’ve been not where we want to be there and that’s got to be one of your goals, that there’s two halves of football and we’d like to be able to start fast in both halves.”

HOLIDAY SEASON

Former WKU wide receiver Jimmy Holiday has thrived in his first season at Louisiana Tech.

A redshirt senior who spent last season playing for the Hilltoppers as a transfer from Tennessee, Holiday made five starts for WKU and tallied 20 catches for 326 yards and a pair of touchdowns in 2023.

This season with the Bulldogs, Holiday lis second on the team in receiving (26 catches for 310 yards, 1 TD) and rushing (33 carries for 161 yards, 4 TDs).

Helton said he’s happy to see Holiday finding success this season.

“I think they’ve done a good job of utilizing him in different ways,” Helton said.

DANGEROUS DALVIN

Redshirt senior Dalvin Smith once more showed off his arm talent in last week’s win against New Mexico State. The Glasgow native and one-time starting quarterback for his high school team, connected with senior wideout Kisean Johnson for a 51-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter.

“They were really aggressive on the perimeter in trying to stop the perimeter screen,” Helton said. “So we felt like we could use Dalvin in that way and it worked in our favor.”

Smith got his first career TD pass in 2022 against South Alabama in the New Orleans Bowl, a 25-yarder to Jaylen Hall. He got another last season with a 32-yarder to Craig Burt Jr. against Florida International, and has two touchdown passes this season – he also had a 36-yard TD pass to Kisean Johnson against Middle Tennessee. Smith is 4-of-6 passing in his career at WKU with four TDs.

“Certainly you’ve got to account for his ability,” Helton said. “I like that fact that obviously he’s a quality thrower, so it does apply pressure to a defense that you have to account for anytime the ball is sped out there on the perimeter there’s a chance that it might be a double pass.”