Western Kentucky players celebrate during Sunday’s 3-0 win against New Mexico State in the Conference USA Volleyball Tournament championship in Lynchburg, Va.

Travis Hudson’s sixth sense was tingling this weekend in Lynchburg, Va.

The longtime Western Kentucky volleyball coach picked up on unseen forces at work seeming to conspire to keep his top-seeded Hilltoppers from winning the Conference USA tournament championship.

Hudson glimpsed that malevolent intent more than once – first with a freak injury to starting setter Callie Bauer in Friday’s opening-round win against Jacksonville State, and then with another equally baffling turn of events in the five-set semifinal victory over UTEP when standout outside hitter Kaylee Cox had to come off the floor with a bloody nose in the fourth set and her replacement, Katie Howard, was unavailable after starting the set at the service line.

“I’ve always said to be successful this time of year, you’ve got to be good – and we are – and you’ve got to be lucky,” Hudson said. “And we weren’t, really. I said in the middle of the tournament, I think fate doesn’t want us to win this tournament, but our players just don’t know that and they just keep finding a way because we just dealt with so much adversity there with Callie’s injury and with Kaylee’s injury.

“We had to overcome a lot to work our way through that tournament. It really put our team to the test, and I’m just really, really proud of the fact that they were able to find a way to win another championship.”

WKU (29-4) didn’t need to win the CUSA tournament to ensure a spot in the upcoming NCAA tournament. The No. 22-ranked Hilltoppers had worked hard all season to build the type of resume that would comfortably lock up an NCAA at-large bid, if it came down to that.

That’s what Hudson was thinking when Bauer, the Tops’ redshirt sophomore setter, sustained a bizarre injury against Jax State in the opening round – a dislocated shoulder on a open-air play, meaning no contact was involved when she reached back violently trying to make a play on the ball.

“The thought of her getting up and playing in the semifinals was absurd to me after that happened,” Hudson said. “But our trainer (Isabella Quaratiello) has done such a phenomenal job with our team. She always does. To be honest, they had to convince me. Look, we were already in the NCAA tournament. We were going to get an at-large bid, and so I was ready to kind of take care of Callie and roll with our backup and that meant we came home then we’d get ready for the NCAA tournament. But Callie Bauer was not having that.”

Bauer was in the lineup the next day against UTEP. Good thing, as the Hilltoppers found themselves in another unfortunate situation. After racing out to a 2-0 lead against the fourth-seeded Miners, the Tops dropped a hard-fought 25-21 decision in the third set to a UTEP squad desperately fighting to keep its season alive.

Another potential disaster struck in the fourth set with the Miners leading 5-4 when Cox had to leave with a nosebleed. With Howard unavailable as the normal replacement, Hudson had to plug in a middle hitter on the outside. Out of sorts the rest of the set, the Tops lost a confidence-boosting 25-15 decision to UTEP.

“I sat them down, sat in front of them and I said, ‘Look me in the eye. Take a deep breath and remember who you are,’ and let’s reset. We’re good, let’s go,” Hudson said. “And we played one of the most dominant sets we’ve played all season long to get to the championship.”

Bauer sparked the Tops in the fateful fifth set with a 9-0 service run to open play, with Cox and Paige Briggs helping it along with three kills during that stretch. The Hilltoppers rolled from there, claiming a lopsided 15-5 win to clinch the match and earn a spot in the CUSA championship.

No. 2 seed New Mexico State threw its own challenge at WKU. The Hilltoppers took the opening set 25-21, then rolled in the second for a 25-16 win to take a 2-0 lead in the match.

The Aggies found their footing, turning a 21-17 deficit into a 24-23 lead. But facing set point, the Hilltoppers got a boost from an unexpected source when longtime reserve senior defensive specialist Cam Mosley came up huge at the service line with back-to-back aces to set up match point – a New Mexico State hitting error ended it.

The fates, which seemed to have conspired against the Hilltoppers, perhaps had merely been leading WKU to this moment for Mosley to shine all along.

“Yesterday was one of the most special moments I’ve had in my coaching career, watching Cam Mosley go back at the end of that match. You have to understand that kid’s story. I mean, she’s a senior, she’s never been in our lineup consistently and every day she works. Every day, she’s the kid that’s in the gym early – no matter if she’s playing, not playing. It’s like a Disney movie.

“She’s a kid who came into the Conference USA tournament, had two aces on the year and we’re down 24-23 in that third set yesterday and she had aces on back-to-back serves – flips that set and puts it back in our favor that we ultimately win. That is the perfect exclamation point for this team because this team is made up of so many kids who paid the price in every way.

“They put the work in, they were selfless, they were about our team. It wasn’t about how much did I play? It was about how we did. I start every single year saying the same thing to the kids in the preseason – we’re either all going to be champions or none of us are. And yesterday we all became champions.”

Now the Hilltoppers again await their fate as the NCAA tournament selection committee determines where WKU will play next – home perhaps as a host team, or probably somewhere else. The team plans to host an NCAA selection show watch party Sunday. ESPN will broadcast the selection show starting at 5 p.m.

“I don’t care where we go, I don’t care where we play – I think we’ve made a hard push to try to host but I don’t know if we’re going to get there and get that opportunity,” Hudson said. “So my only wish on my wish list is that the committee take a hard look at what we’ve done and respect us for what we’ve accomplished. And wherever they need to send us competitively is fine – I don’t want to stay close or go to a certain place.

“I want to be respected at the level that this team has earned. I don’t know that we’re going to be one of the 16 hosts, but we should be one of the seeded teams right underneath that, and obviously the higher your seed underneath that, the better the matchups are going to look moving forward.”