Hank Plona’s rise to become the new head men’s basketball coach at Western Kentucky was nothing short of meteoric.

Just more than 11 months after Plona was announced as a new assistant coach for first-year head coach Steve Lutz – and one Conference USA tournament championship and NCAA tournament appearance later – and the Avon, Connecticut, native was being introduced as the 17th all-time head coach at WKU.

Unlike Lutz, who took the job at WKU with no previous ties to the program, Plona has more than a year of experience with all things Western Kentucky.

With a strong core of returning players and coaches from that 22-12 team that won the CUSA tournament for the first time and broke an NCAA tournament drought that had extended to an unfathomable 11 years, Plona knows expectations are high for the Tops this season even without Lutz, who parlayed last season’s success into landing the head coaching job at Oklahoma State.

Plona is no newcomer to the role, having spent eight seasons as head coach at junior-college powerhouse Indian Hills (Iowa), where he won 86.5% of his games and led the program to the National Junior College Athletic Association national tournament seven times.

“The experience that I had at Indian Hills is very valuable,” Plona said. “I think that’s one of the best non-Division I programs in the country, and people care, so you learn as a coach that you put more pressure on yourself than anybody else ever could. But I think I’ve learned in my previous experience how to manage that with reality. Even our season last year, there’s always pressure to win. When we lost those four games going into the conference tournament – and give coach Lutz a lot of credit – that didn’t faze us, it didn’t break us. That experience, seeing it from a chair over and seeing how we handled that situation when we have so many of those same guys back this year – yeah there’s pressure to win, but man this group has stuck together through ups and downs.

“ … I know that there are going to be ups and downs. If anybody thinks that we’re just going to steamroll and this will be easy … I don’t want this to be easy for our guys. We have a team that could be and we believe has the potential to be a special group in March. But the way you get there is to challenge yourself. The way you get there is to learn through adversity. The way you get there is to overcome obstacles.”

Plona’s first team at WKU has plenty of experience on overcoming those obstacles together. The Tops can count the return of eight core players off last season’s squad, headlined by first-team All-CUSA point guard Don McHenry plus fellow guards Khristian Lander, Enoch Kalambay, Teagan Moore, Jack Edelen and Jalen Jackson, plus forwards Tyrone Marshall Jr. and Babacar Faye.

That experienced depth has even more potential, depending on the health status of forward Fallou Diagne and guard Terrion Murdix as they continue recovering from offseason surgery – Diagne missed but five games last season with a knee injury and Murdix sat out the entire season after knee surgery following his transfer from Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

Longtime walkons Jaylen Dorsey and Tyler Olden are both back to add even more cohesion to a roster, while assistants Martin Cross, Tim MacAllister and Darryl Jackson along with director of player development and video Wyatt Battaile all opted to remain on staff.

“In a world where most college basketball teams are very new and maybe there’s an uneasiness with getting the personallties (to mesh), we do have a closeness,” Plona said. “I told them in our workout (last week), ‘We all know we’re here for the right reasons. We all know we’re here to win. You’ve guys have got to be you now, you’ve got to be confident. You don’t have to worry about stepping on each other’s toes and being respectful. We’re past that point.’ It is enjoyable and it is a good feeling going into this year knowing we have a closeness and a togetherness that we don’t think can be broken.”

Even the additions to the program have been easy fits. Plona brought in two new assistants he’s known for years in Josh Newman and Eric Murphy. Newman, who Plona describes as both a friend and mentor, arrived at WKU after a stint as an assistant coach at Pacific. A longtime head coach at multiple levels of college basketball, Newman helped Plona break into the profession by hiring him as an assistant at Arkansas-Fort Smith in 2009.

Murphy, who went 143-34 in six years as head coach at Florida SouthWestern College, has been a coach Plona has long talked basketball with dating back to both their tenures in the junior-college ranks.

“It’s a mixed together staff, but it’s a staff that when I’m here I’m very familiar with everybody and I have working relationships with everybody on the staff,” Plona said. “I think everybody fits together really well.”

With a few holes to fill on the roster, Plona continued to lean on his connections. Transfer guard Braxton Bayless (Niagara) and forward Leeroy Odiahi (Old Dominion) each played two seasons for Plona at Indian Hills, while fellow transfer forward Blaise Keita (Nebraska) has been a player Plona has known dating back to his days in high school at Sunrise Christian (Kansas) and Coffeyville Community College (Kansas).

Even the incoming freshmen, former Warren Central standout Kade Unseld and Memphis native Julius Thedford, already had ties to the program. Unseld committed early on and Thedford was his teammate in AAU ball.

“Kade Unseld’s been a part of our program for almost a year now,” Plona said. “Kade’s been in here almost every single day rehabbing and getting strength and conditioning, and getting back in shape. Having Kade stay with us is almost like having a returner he’s been with us so long at this point.”

Now in the second week of summer workouts, Plona said that strong team cohesion is already evident. The focus in June is to continue building that togetherness while reinforcing the daily habits of maintaining consistent effort and communication. Individual skill development is also a big part of the process in the first half of the summer period.

“We’re five months from our first game,” Plona said. “I think just as important as building our team is continuing to get these individual players better. We’re closer to the end of the season than we are to the beginning of the season, so we’re not even halfway through an offseason really where they can develop their games and become better shooters and better ballhandlers and better passers and improve their IQ. It’s a combination of team workout, team building, team practice type things and individual group development. Of the four hours we’ll be on the court, it’ll probably be about half and half.”

Next month, the work of developing a specific style of play will begin.

“To be honest with you, I don’t know exactly know what we’re going to do yet,” Plona said. “Obviously, we have a lot of guys back from a team that we did it a certain way last year. My experience as a head coach – it’s the same aggressive, fast style but how it’s done is a little bit different. I kind of want to see what naturally develops because it will probably be some kind of mix of what we did last year and some things that I’m familiar with. Honestly, I want to kind of let them figure out on their own what the guys naturally do on the court – especially on offense – and to figure out what makes sense for us from a system point of view. It’s kind of intentional that we’ll take this first month not to address that because I do want to see what the guys naturally tend to do and what they’re good at naturally doing together.”

Under Plona, expect the Hilltoppers to continue pushing the pace on offense – something the program excelled at last season.

“Obviously, we want to score the basketball. We want to have guys on the floor that are all weapons to put the ball in the bucket,” Plona said. “I think we do return a lot of scoring. My teams traditionally have taken a lot of 3s – 3 is more than 2, and I think shooting 40% from 3 is like shooting 60% from 2,” Plona said. “I get it, there are some live by the 3, die by the 3 mantras that you hear sometimes. But I want us to be able to shoot the ball.

“ … I do think we could have a dynamic team. I think we could use our speed and athleticism on both ends of the floor. We’re going to have to be fast and aggressive and hopefully exciting when people watch us, but we’re going to have to be fast and aggressive and make people uncomfortable. That’s kind of our bread and butter, and I think it will remain that way this year.”

INJURY UPDATES

The biggest questions remain the potential availability of Diagne and Murdix for this season.

Diagne, a 6-foot-11 forward/center, underwent another knee operation last Thursday as he continues to try to get back on the court.

Murdix, a point guard who was a first-team all-conference performer under Lutz at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, had his second knee surgery in April after missing all last season.

“Those guys are family to us and obviously we’re hoping that they rehab,” Plona said. “Whether it’s this year or potentially the following year, we’re hoping that Terrion and Fallou get healthy and are Hilltoppers on the court.”

Jackson, who also followed Lutz to WKU from Texas A&M Corpus Christi last season, got off to a slow start as he recovered from foot surgery to become a regular rotation player and one of the team’s best defenders before another foot injury sidelined him the remainder of the season. Jackson appeared in just 10 games with two starts, averaging 4.3 points.

Plona expects Jackson to receive a medical hardship and be eligible to play this upcoming season.

“I think he adds a toughness and experience and a defensive mindset – some point guard qualities of making teammates better,” Plona said. “Jalen’s been a part of five league championship teams at this point in his career, so I think the fact that he wanted to remain with our group … I think he’s a very important piece.”

Moore, who produced a strong freshman season averaging 6.2 points and 2.3 rebounds per game last year, will miss the summer session as he recovers from hip surgery for an injury that nagged him last season.

Keita, a 6-11 forward who sat out last season at Nebraska after undergoing ankle surgery, has been healthy for about four or five months, Plona said.

Unseld continues to make good progress as he rehabs a knee injury.

All but Moore are working out with the team during the summer.

SCHEDULING

The 2024-25 schedule remains a work in progress, with only two nonconference home games confirmed by WKU so far – return games from Murray State and Wichita State. The Tops will also host one game at E.A. Diddle Arena and travel for another in the second year of the WAC-CUSA Challenge.

Add in nine CUSA home games – Kennesaw State joins the conference this season, bringing the league up to 10 teams – and much of the home slate is already nailed down.

The Tops also expect to play in another multi-team event this coming season.

“We’re going to challenge ourselves,” Plona said. “For this team that we currently have that made the NCAA tournament and had a halftime lead against Marquette, this team wants to challenge themselves. That’s part of them all wanting to come back here to Western Kentucky. They want to challenge themselves against the best as much as possible.”

Having a year of coaching in CUSA has given Plona a healthy respect for the conference, which returns nine of 10 head coaches from last season with Plona the only newcomer. Plona describes it as “an old, experienced league.”

“The league appears to be very challenging,” Plona said. “Louisiana Tech had the best NET ranking and they return Daniel Batcho and their point guard Sean Newman and they’ve signed some really good players. Middle Tennessee has added a lot of transfers, Liberty has added a lot of transfers, UTEP was obviously a couple minutes away from beating us in the final – they return a bunch and have added some of the better players in the league I think. New Mexico State will be improved, Jacksonville State will be improved – Sam Houston State was the No. 1 seed (in the CUSA tournament) last year and they return Lamar Wilkerson, who’s a first-team all-league player.

“I think last year we saw there are no days off. Every game you play, home or on the road, is going to be a challenge. I think it will be very similar this year.”{&end}