Western Kentucky gained a bit of momentum on a road last weekend and the Hilltoppers aim to pick up steam with a pair of home games at E.A. Diddle Arena.

Coming off Saturday’s 75-66 win at Conference USA rival Sam Houston, the Tops enter Thursday night’s 7 p.m. matchup against CUSA foe UTEP looking to continue climbing the conference standings.

WKU (12-8 overall, 3-4 CUSA) are currently eighth in the 10-team standings, so there is plenty of room to improve. But first-year coach Hank Plona is keeping that in perspective – as an assistant on former head coach Steve Lutz’s staff last season, Plona helped the Tops win the CUSA tournament championship and lock up the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2013.

The Hilltoppers record through seven games in CUSA last year? Same as this season, 3-4. There is a big difference, though, and it’s an encouraging one for this season’s team. Last year, WKU posted that 3-4 record with four home games during that stretch. This year, the Tops have won just as many with five out of seven league games on the road.

“We were 2-6 on the road last year and we’re 2-3 right now,” Plona said. “It’s a hard league to win road games in. I think when the schedule came out and you knew you’d start this way … it was opposite last year and we obviously got rolling a little bit, but then I know we lost four in a row at the end of last year but three of those were on the road. The home-road split thing in our league always seems to be a real deal. I guess we’re one game up on home-road splits right now, so I don’t think we’re in terrible shape.”

Picking up a road win against the Bearkats over the weekend went a long way toward improving the Tops’ outlook.

“I thought there were a lot of positives from really our last three or four games, but it’s good to see those lead to a win on Saturday,” Plona said. “Obviously since Christmas we’ve had six of eight (games) on the road, five of seven in the league, so you know going in that that’s not easy and after experiencing it I would agree that it’s certainly not. But at the same time to be where we’re at right now, we’re in decent shape. We’re moving forward, I think our team is getting better. We’re surviving the ups and downs and the injuries, stuff like that we’ve been through, and good to be coming back home this week after a win at Sam Houston.”

WKU is still far from full strength – second-leading scorer and top rebounder Babacar Faye and standout freshman guard Julius Thedford remain out of action for Thursday’s matchup against UTEP and Saturday’s 2 p.m. home game against New Mexico State, with the timetable for either player’s return from injury still uncertain.

Picking up a win against the Miners on Thursday night would go a long way toward the Tops tightening the CUSA standings. UTEP (15-5, 5-2 CUSA) is currently tied wit Middle Tennessee and Jacksonville State for first place in the league, with New Mexico State also two spots ahead of WKU.

UTEP forward Otis Frazier III is coming off a CUSA Player of the Week honor after scoring 17 points and tallying eight steals in a win against Jacksonville State. Frazier, along with guard Corey Camper Jr., are tied for the league league averaging 2.4 steals apiece. The Miners are the league’s best at forcing turnovers at 18 per game.

“They pressure you a lot of the court and then they kind of put their guys that are in help defense way up the line,” Plona said. “So they want to make it seem like if you beat your man that you’re running into trouble. I think if you can succeed versus that, there’s some open shots that you can have at the rim. If you fail versus that, they’re going to get open shots. They’re going to get steals and they’re going to get run outs. So you can’t have live-ball turnovers.

“That’s why they’re really dangerous, is because the steals lead to layups and dunks at the other end. So your mistake is almost compounded because it’s not just throwing the ball out of bounds, it’s their team rips it from you and now has a 2-on-1 going the other way.”

There is room to exploit that ultra-aggressive defense – by defending so far from the rim, the Miners have struggled with defensive rebounding this season and are last in the league with 29.2 per game.

“UTEP really pressures out on the floor,” Plona said. “They’re No. 1 in the country in forcing turnovers, but when you pressure out that far sometimes the rim is a little bit open if you miss a shot. It’s hard to get up and pressure and deny, then when a shot goes up get back on the inside of your man. So with how they play, there’s some give and take.”

Thursday’s game, which will be broadcast on ESPN+, is a rematch of last season’s CUSA Tournament championship played in Huntsville, Alabama. The Tops won 78-71 to earn the NCAA Tournament automatic bid and beat the Miners two out of three times last season.

Plona has been encouraged by some positive signs from his squad, which had been in a shooting slump since around the Christmas break. WKU went 9-for-11 from inside the 3-point arc in the second half against Sam Houston on Saturday. The Tops still rank last in CUSA in field-goal percentage (42.3%) and are seventh in 3-point shooting (33.0%).

“We can’t (make) one or two passes, take forced, tough dribble two-point shots,” Plona said. “Get just below the elbow and from 10 feet just throw it up at the rim – if you’re going to shoot that, it should be a steady, mid-range pull-up jumper that we work on every single day. We can’t not know what to do and when you don’t know what to do just attack the rim and just try to jump into a shot blocker and throw it up there.”