Western Kentucky’s men’s basketball team takes a winning streak out on the road this week.

The Hilltoppers would very much like to add to that three-game streak starting Thursday night at Kennesaw State, the first of a pair of Conference USA road matchups that concludes with a Saturday contest at Jacksonville State.

Coming off Saturday’s 101-69 blowout win against New Mexico State at E.A. Diddle Arena, WKU (14-8 overall, 5-4 CUSA) is trending in a positive direction midway through the conference race.

“Two good wins for our basketball team – a hard-fought win against UTEP on Thursday and obviously a pretty convincing performance on Saturday vs. New Mexico State,” WKU coach Hank Plona said. “So two different kind of wins, but probably both that can helps us kind of move forward and hopefully give us a little bit of confidence as we make the turn here in the league and start playing repeat opponents.”

Thursday’s 6 p.m. matchup against Kennesaw State at the KSU Convocation Center represents the first of those repeat CUSA games, and for the Tops the first time around produced a good memory. WKU beat Kennesaw State, in its first year in CUSA, 85-69 on Jan. 11 for a bounce-back at Diddle after losing to Jax State two days before.

The rematch pits two of a stunning six teams tied for third place in the CUSA standings – in a 10-team league.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Plona said. “I brought up the standings to the guys the other day probably for the first time all year, just because we’re kind of at the turn and we start playing repeat opponents. I’m sure they see, I see the six-way tie and I think to myself, ‘It’s crazy.’ At the same time, we have learned that we can beat and struggle against anybody.

“I think we have respect for all nine opponents in our league. Our league is the ninth-ranked league in America right now.”

Kennesaw State (13-9, 5-4 CUSA) is the CUSA’s top-scoring offense this year at 78.1 points per game, with the Hilltoppers (78.0) just behind in second. Freshman guard Adrian Wooley (18.2 points per game, fourth in CUSA) and junior guard Simeon Cottle (17.6 ppg, sixth in CUSA) has been a dangerous scoring tandem for the Owls.

In the first matchup against the Tops, Wooley went for 27 points and Cottle had 15 but neither was great shooting – Kennesaw was a nightmarish 1-for-19 from 3-point range in the first half against WKU and ended up hitting just 8-of-41 (19.5%) from that distance as part of a 32.9% shooting night.

“Their tempo is very fast,” Plona said. “When we play them, I think we’re No. 1 in the league in tempo and they’re No. 2. When you look at total points or total rebounds, I think that their numbers are high. At the same time, part of that happens because of the speed of the game. They do want to push the pace. When they do get rebounds, them and us are really probably the only two teams in the league that just try to get it and go.”

WKU senior guard Don McHenry got going in a big way in Saturday’s win against New Mexico State. Coming off the bench for the third straight game, the Tops’ leading scorer had one of his best career days with the program when he hit a career-high seven 3-pointers as part of a 27-point performance. Fellow senior Tyrone Marshall Jr. delivered an excellent stat line with 24 points, including four 3-pointers, along with seven rebounds, three assists, a pair of blocks and two steals.

“These last couple games we’ve been hitting some shots and sometimes when you make shots you lose a little bit of focus on offensive rebounding because the shots go in,” Plona said. “We’ve got to make sure on both ends of the floor that’s an area where we’re successful.”