The NCAA Tournament has gone without Western Kentucky for seven years. That drought has been close to ending in the past two Conference USA Tournament championship games – if only Lamonte Bearden’s floater hadn’t rimmed out in 2018 and Xavier Green hadn’t gone off from the 3-point line for Old Dominion in last year’s final.

The Hilltoppers were a combined seven points from finally breaking through. With a loaded roster, the preseason expectation was that jump would finally happen this year, with WKU being picked to win the league.

By December, skepticism seeped in with the injury to the team’s best professional prospect, as well as the ineligibility news of a player the Hilltoppers never had on the court. Center Charles Bassey and point guard Kenny Cooper were supposed to be central pieces to finally make that jump WKU hasn’t experienced since 2013.

“There’s no question taking those pieces and parts away from this team, what it could’ve done,” WKU coach Rick Stansbury said. “What most teams probably would’ve done, this team didn’t do it.”

WKU certainly hasn’t folded. It has managed a shallow bench and maintained its place near the top of the conference despite the missing pieces and role changes by every player.

It meant Taveion Hollingsworth becoming a point guard while the reclassified freshman Jordan Rawls adjusted to the fire into which he was thrown. It meant Jared Savage becoming a strong forward and the team’s best rebounder rather than just a 3-point shooter. It meant Carson Williams becoming the primary inside presence and somehow winning 1-on-3 battles in the paint. It meant Josh Anderson becoming a more complete basketball player rather than a never-ending dunk highlight reel.

And now the stage is set for the Hilltoppers to try and uphold the expectation set before the year, despite looking nothing like the team they were in early November.

WKU is the No. 2 seed in the C-USA Tournament this week in Frisco, Texas, where it’ll have to win three games in three days to claim the title it’s come so close to grabbing the last two years.

The Hilltoppers (20-10) will play the winner of seventh-seeded UAB vs. No. 10 seed UTSA in the quarterfinals Thursday at 8:30 p.m. CT at The Star.

Beyond Bassey and Cooper’s absence, WKU is still in a prime position even with senior Camron Justice missing portions of the season to a back injury. There were games this season where the Hilltoppers played with just their starting five or used the bench only to provide a breather.

They’ve managed to win 13 of 20 games since the weekend Bassey’s season ended with a knee injury and the news Cooper wouldn’t be granted immediate eligibility by the NCAA. Bassey was the 6-foot-11 preseason All-American who opted to return to WKU for his sophomore season and better boost his game to earn a future pick in the NBA draft. He was averaging 15.3 points, 9.2 rebounds per game and had 16 blocked shots in 10 games before the knee injury against Arkansas on Dec. 7 that will keep him rehabbing for the next few months.

Cooper was the veteran senior guard who made a solid career leading Lipscomb the last three seasons. He transferred when a coaching change happened and still wasn’t granted immediate eligibility.

Justice missed three complete games with a bulging disc in his back, but was ineffective in other games where the injury hampered him in limited minutes.

That left players like Hollingsworth, Williams and Savage to average at least 36 minutes per game through the conference stretch. Anderson and Rawls averaged 32 minutes per contest, and Justice averaged 23 minutes.

The drop-off beyond that is significant to seven minutes on average off the bench between guard Jeremiah Gambrell and forward Isaiah Cozart.

And still, WKU has been competitive even in the losses. In five conference losses, WKU’s combined margin of defeat of 26 points is the fewest in four years under Stansbury. The Hilltoppers’ biggest defeat, a 10-point loss at UAB on Jan. 7, was a three-point game with 3:44 to go.

When WKU lost two games at Florida Atlantic and FIU where it primarily used five players, it responded with one of its best all-around defensive games to beat Louisiana Tech when conference standing implications were high.

And on Sunday, several days after a heartbreaking loss at North Texas where the regular-season championship was on the line, WKU responded with six players scoring in double figures to beat FIU in the finale.

Now the battle-tested Hilltoppers will see if they can dig up that same performance for three days in Texas, hoping the year doesn’t end there.

“That tells you the toughness and character these guys have,” Stansbury said. “It’s not about motivation. If you’ve got to motivate guys to play every night, you’re in trouble. Motivation has to come from within and that’s what we’ve got, we’ve got guys that can get themselves off the mat and keep things in perspective. Again, find ways to compete. I’ve got no magic pills or magic dust. You have to have that heart and that gut. This team has lots of hearts and lots of guts.”