When Western Kentucky needed an additional player to become a scoring threat, Greg Collins went to one of his most reliable Lady Toppers. Whitney Creech’s name is synonymous in Kentucky for scoring more than 5,000 points in high school, but she’s developed into a distributing point guard in college.

WKU’s coach needed the old Creech to return for the team to make this late-season momentum shift happen.

So, in the second-to-last game of the season at North Texas, Collins sat Creech on the bench and shot it to her straight.

“I took her out and let her sit there and watch the game a while and said you scored 5,000 points in high school,” Collins said. “You know how to find the basket. If you can’t go find that basket, then we’re not going to be very good.”

In WKU’s last two games, Creech scored 31 points for her best scoring production in consecutive games this year. The junior guard scored a season-high 16 points at North Texas and then added 15 points in the home finale Thursday against Middle Tennessee.

An uptick in scoring that the Jenkins native provides is a needed spark for a WKU team looking to defend back-to-back Conference USA Tournament titles this week in Frisco, Texas.

“These last two games I just tried to be more aggressive because they’re giving me shots and I just take them and knock them down,” Creech said. “Once I start to score, it’s going to open everything else up as well. Scoring is going to help our offense all around.”

Creech’s aggressiveness paid off by shooting 63 percent or better in both contests. On March 2 in Denton, Texas, Creech shot 6 of 9 from the field with a 3-pointer and three free throws. Last week against Middle Tennessee, she was 7 of 11 from the field with four assists and no turnovers in 38 minutes, which was only the second time this season she played that long in a game.

With Creech becoming a new threat to find the basket, it alleviates pressure off leading scorers Dee Givens (18 points per game), Raneem Elgedawy (16 ppg), Alexis Brewer (10.6 ppg) and freshman Meral Abdelgawad (8.9 ppg).

“It’s about time,” Givens said. “Whit is always in the gym. Behind me, she’s the second-most person in the gym. Her time has come and she’s putting points on the board for us and it’s taking pressure off me, Raneem, Alexis and Meral, too. It’s good for her.”

It’s just like riding a bike for the 5-foot-8 guard who’s scored more than anyone else in Kentucky high school basketball history. Creech finished her prep career at Jenkins in 2016 with 5,527 points and led the nation in scoring each of her final two seasons, averaging 42.0 points per game as a junior and 50.3 as a senior.

She joined a WKU team her freshman year led by veterans and became the Lady Toppers’ main point guard as a sophomore last season. She had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.73 and averaged 5.7 assists per game in last year’s C-USA Tournament.

In light of those numbers, it wasn’t natural for Creech. It was a need she knew she could meet. Asking his point guard to start shooting again was something Collins knew the team needed.

“She’s not a natural point guard,” Collins said. “She’s more of a scoring guard. Out of necessity we needed her to be a point guard. When I told her we need this, not just that you can do it but the team needs this, that made her feel like it was OK to take some shots at it. She’s focused on the things she’s more successful at.”

Before the last two games, Creech reached double-figure scoring just three times and never more than 12 points. She leads the team with 91 assists, good for three per game, and hopes this groove she found lasts through the week in Texas.

“Just change your mindset and do whatever coach needs me to do to help this team win,” Creech said, “whether that’s to score or distribute. I’m going to do that. Whatever it takes for us to win.”