Western Kentucky’s men’s basketball team has every intention of repeating as the Conference USA Men’s Basketball Tournament champions.

That the Hilltoppers will have to start that pursuit two days earlier and with one more game than hoped is not ideal.

WKU’s chances of securing a top-six seed and the resulting first-round bye went up in smoke with Saturday’s regular season-ending 90-61 loss to Liberty at E.A. Diddle Arena, meaning the Hilltoppers will have to play four games instead of three to make the CUSA championship in at Propst Arena in Huntsville, Alabama. Instead of extra rest and time to prepare, the No. 7 seed Tops will face No. 10 Florida International at 8 p.m. Tuesday night, with the winner advancing to face No. 2 seed Jacksonville State the following night in the quarterfinals.

In the immortal words of many of nameless coach – it is what it is.

“This group is good enough to win any game when we step on the floor,” WKU coach Hank Plona said. “Now, winning a conference championship, winning four games in five days, that’s all very difficult to do. But I do think that we’ve had our moments where we’ve broke through and we showed the heart that we have. And we’ve shown what we have the potential to be. We have 17 wins and we’re not going down there to do anything to try and win, so we’re going to try to add onto that.

“I guess the best reflection that I have is we won three out of five after losing four in a row. That four-game stretch was kind of a stretch that took us a little off course.”

WKU (17-14) has had more than its share of setbacks due to injuries this season. Shortly before the season began, returning sophomore guard Teagan Moore opted to redshirt after hip surgery, joining three Hilltoppers already slated to miss the season due to injury in forward Fallou Diagne, guard Terrion Murdix and incoming freshman guard Kade Unseld.

The Tops took another big hit when senior forward Babacar Faye, at the time the team’s second-leading scorer and top rebounder, was hurt in a December home game against Marshall. His knee injury ultimately did not require surgery and WKU hoped he might be able to return at some point, but the recovery lagged and Faye opted for a redshirt season.

Standout freshman guard Julius Thedford went down with a dislocated kneecap Jan. 18 at Middle Tennessee – again, the hope was that Thedford might get back before the season was over but it didn’t happen.

Plona, in his first season as head coach after serving as Steve Lutz’s top assistant in 2023-24, saw what was a deep and experienced roster – one of the oldest in NCAA Division I – decimated by injuries.

“It hasn’t gone the way that we probably envisioned it,” Plona said. “College basketball today starts summer workouts on about June 1 and man on June 1, it seemed like we were a pretty well-oiled machine.”

The Hilltoppers soldiered on, winning more than they lost before that four game skid – the last two at home – sent them plummeting down the CUSA standings. WKU bounced back by winning three of four before Saturday’s blowout loss to Liberty – Plona hopes his team will bounce back again.

“I think we need to identify what happened and why it happened,” Plona said. “I don’t think you harp on it or beat anybody over the head with it, but you’ve got to identify the issues and fix them. We have bounced back from every challenging game like this that we’ve had, so that’s a good history and experience to have. At the same time, as the season wraps up and there becomes consequences with each game you do have to handle the ups and downs. I think we’ve struggled to handle the downs here in the month of February.

“ … We have bounced back a million times from adversity, so we’ll have to do it one more time for sure.”

The Hilltoppers’ first challenge is beating FIU for the second time in less than a week. After getting blown out by the Panthers 85-66 in the first meeting on Jan. 4 in Miami, WKU returned the favor with a 76-67 win last Thursday at Diddle. Senior guard Don McHenry scored 20 points and graduate senior guard Khristian Lander added 19 in the win.

Plona expects to get FIU’s best shot on Tuesday.

“They play very, very hard – they always do,” Plona said. “They’re going to guard you, they’re going to compete. The fact that they’ve had some ups and downs this year – more downs than ups – and they still will bring an intensity and passion every time they play the game. Every game in this league is a challenging game and we’ve got to be our best on Tuesday night.”

The Tops don’t have as much time to cure what ailed them Saturday against Liberty as they’d like, but Plona expects his veteran group to pull together and play at a high level to challenge for the CUSA title and the NCAA Tournament automatic bid that comes with it.

“We split with them in the regular season, we figured out how to win a game (against FIU) on Thursday night,” Plona said. “But if we don’t have the senior maturity to know that any time you step on the floor there’s a demand to do your best and if you’re short of that when things go wrong, if we haven’t learned that by now then that’s an immaturity that should not be present with an older group.”

WKU graduate senior guard Jalen Jackson, who was on last year’s team but missed the postseason after suffering his own season-ending injury in the middle of the year, thinks the Tops will be ready to perform in Huntsville.

“At the end of the day, once the game starts on Tuesday that could potentially be our last one,” WKU graduate senior guard Jalen Jackson said. “I don’t think any of us want our season to end that way, so we’re going to fight until we have no more left in us.”