Western Kentucky was picked this winter to finish in the middle of the Conference USA pack.

This weekend, the Hilltoppers can buck those expectations and seal a division title.

WKU will host Texas-San Antonio for a three-game series at the WKU Softball Complex, completing both teams’ regular-season schedules.

The Toppers (34-12 overall, 15-6 C-USA) and Roadrunners (20-27, 8-13) will play a doubleheader Saturday at 1 p.m., then finish the series at 1 p.m. Sunday.

WKU enters the weekend with a one-game lead in the C-USA East Division over second-place Marshall (33-18, 14-7).

A Hilltopper sweep guarantees the team its first softball crown of any sort since sweeping the conference’s East Division, overall regular-season and tournament titles in 2015.

“This series is very important,” first baseman Maddie Bowlds told the Daily News on Wednesday after a win over Murray State.

“It determines where we get placed in conference. So we need to go out and get all three wins.”

WKU was voted seventh overall of 12 teams in the Conference USA preseason poll released in January. East Division squads Florida Atlantic, Florida International and Middle Tennessee were all picked ahead of the Tops.

But WKU has outpaced those projections thanks to a balanced all-around approach. In C-USA games, the Toppers rank second across the league in batting average (.304), third in ERA (3.07) and fourth in fielding percentage (.971).

Coach Amy Tudor’s WKU squad went a combined 15-3 over its first six conference weekend series, then hit a speed bump last weekend at Louisiana Tech. The Bulldogs swept the Hilltoppers by a combined tally of 19-2, dropping WKU’s lead over Marshall from four games to one.

The Tops and Thundering Herd met April 6-7 in Huntington, W.Va. Marshall won two of three over WKU, giving the Herd an East Division tiebreaker over the Hilltoppers should the teams finish with the same league record.

With that in mind, WKU must win at least one more game this weekend against UTSA than Marshall wins in a three-game series vs. FAU in order to clinch a division crown.

A division title won’t automatically clinch the Toppers a top-two seed in the C-USA Tournament, which begins Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala.

Under the current conference tournament format, the top three teams in each division qualify for the event. Two wild-card squads are picked from the remaining six squads, regardless of division.

The conference then seeds those eight teams based on overall regular-season record. Heading into the final weekend, WKU is on track for the No. 3 seed, with La Tech (39-13, 17-4) and North Texas (32-16, 17-4) both two games ahead of the Hilltoppers in the league standings.

The top two seeds in the tournament advance to the double-elimination stage, which begins Thursday.

WKU is still in the hunt for one of those top two seeds, but it’ll need to take care of its own business vs. UTSA and then hope for help from either Southern Mississippi, which faces Louisiana Tech, or Middle Tennessee, which plays North Texas.

In addition to all the weekend’s title ramifications, the Tops will look to send their seniors out a winner in their final games at the WKU Softball Complex.

Five seniors – Cassidy Blackford, Rebekah Engelhardt, Kelsey McGuffin, Shannon Plese and Jordan Vorbrink – will be honored before Sunday’s regular-season finale.

“I think we have to have great command in the circle, play solid defense behind them and also we have to produce runs,” Tudor said of the series. “When we hit, we’re light, loose and ready to go.

“I think we’ll need all three parts of the game.”{&end}