Record: 20-15, 10-10 Sun Belt
RPI: 150
Coach: Ray Harper, 2 seasons, 1 NCAA appearance
Last NCAA tournament appearance: Lost to Kentucky 81-66 in second round (2012)
Notable wins: DePaul, Southern Illinois
While sophomore forwards T.J. Price and George Fant were named second-team and third-team all-Sun Belt, respectively, it is certainly senior point guard Jamal Crook who makes the Hilltoppers tick. After playing in the first 11 games this season and averaging team highs with 14.5 points and 4.5 assists per game, he suffered a fractured right foot and missed the next 11 games. With Cook running the show from the backcourt, the Hilltoppers are 16-7. In the 11 games he missed, they went 3-8. The difference in Western Kentucky’s turnover margin with him in the game is four better than when not. In an early game against Western Carolina before the injury, the Louisville, Ky., product scored a career-high 26 points.
Second-year coach Ray Harper has a knack for getting the Hilltoppers to play their best basketball in March. Last season, he was elevated from assistant to interim head coach when Ken McDonald was fired in mid-season. From there, the Hilltoppers went on an unlikely run that netted the team the Sun Belt Conference tournament title and NCAA berth despite having a losing record. This season, Western Kentucky peaked again at the Sun Belt tourney despite being seeded sixth, now going 8-0 in league tourney play the past two seasons. Harper has 12 previous seasons of head coaching experience at NCAA Division II Kentucky Wesleyan and NAIA member Oklahoma City. He won two national championships at each school.
Third-ranked Kansas, the No. 1 seed in the South Region, won both the Big 12 Conference regular season and tournament titles. The Jayhawks, runners-up to Kentucky in last year’s national championship game, are making their 24th-straight NCAA tourney appearance, the longest current streak in the country. Kansas returned four seniors from last year’s squad, including 7-foot center Luke Withey, the two-time
Big 12 defensive player of the year. The program’s all-time blocked shots leader is third in the country in blocked shots per game this season. Freshman guard Ben McLemore arrived on the scene to lead the team in scoring. He is considered one of the best freshmen in the country, if not the best. The Jayhawks hit a mid-league skid by losing three games, including one to lowly Texas Christian, but has since righted the ship to win nine of their last 10.
The Western Kentucky basketball program is one of college’s basketball’s winningest, entering this season eighth overall in winning percentage (.667) and 17th in victories (1,659). When legendary Hilltoppers coach E.A. Diddle resigned in 1964 after 42 seasons, he was college basketball’s all-time winningest coach with 759 victories. The school’s arena is named after him.
