Jim Mashek

FIRST-YEAR POINT GUARD DON McHENRY MAKES IT HAPPEN; WKU EXTENDS WIN STREAK TO EIGHT GAMES

Steve Lutz, the first-year men’s basketball coach at Western Kentucky University, has quickly left his imprint on the Hilltoppers, while doing a superb job of re-shaping the basketball culture in a hoops-crazy college town with NCAA Tournament ambitions.

Lutz has them, too, of course, which is a big reason why WKU athletics director Todd Stewart and university brass chose to hire the tall, lean 51-year-old coach from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

A season-high E.A. Diddle Arena crowd of 5,057 turned out to see the Hilltoppers hold on for a tense 70-68 victory over visiting Liberty University, a first-year member of Conference USA.

“All of us look at the future,” said WKU forward Dontaie Allen, “but at the end of the day, it’s about tomorrow.”

The Tops extended their winning streak to eight games, improving to 12-3 overall and 1-0 in C-USA. Liberty, a private, faith-based university in Lynchburg, Virginia, dropped to 11-5 and 0-1 respectively.

Western Kentucky survived some anxious moments down the stretch, holding on when the Tops had to protect a lead of just two or three points in the final minute. WKU will resume its Conference USA schedule on Wednesday, with a road game against Sam Houston State (8-8 overall, 1-0 in C-USA) in Huntsville, Texas.

Lutz restructured the WKU roster after the 2022-23 season, bringing in the likes of Don McHenry, a point guard from the junior-college ranks, and Brandon Newman, a transfer from Purdue, where Lutz had spent four years (2017-21) as an assistant coach to longtime head coach Matt Painter.

Western Kentucky has just four holdovers from Rick Stansbury’s seventh and final WKU squad, which has played a major part of “changing the culture” of the program, to which veteran WKU guard Khristian Lander, a senior from Evansville, alluded in late December.

Lander wasn’t exactly shy about it, either.

“I just think it’s a total culture change (from Stansbury’s tenure), in my opinion,” Lander said after the Hilltoppers’ gritty, 86-84 victory over visiting Abilene Christian University on December 30. “We’re more together, I feel like.”

Lander was only one of four players to return from Rick Stansbury’s final WKU team, along with senior swingman Dontaie Allen, senior forward Tyrone Marshall and 6-foot-11 Fallou Diagne, who has played only a handful of minutes this season.

Established players such as Dayvion McKnight and Jamarion Sharp left WKU via the freedom of the NCAA’s Transfer Portal, McKnight going to Xavier and Sharp trying his hand at the SEC with the Ole Miss Rebels.

McKnight is having a solid season, averaging about 10 points, five assists and 4.5 rebounds per game at Xavier, while the 7-foot-5 Sharp remains a defensive specialist at Ole Miss, which is off to an impressive 13-1 start.

Lutz, however, likes what he’s working with in Bowling Green, and WKU fans are starting to take notice. The Hilltoppers are unbeaten at E.A. Diddle Arena this season, and they took another “Diddle Lap,” sharing the experience with courtside fans, the same way Matt Painter’s Purdue Boilermakers salute their home crowd in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Lutz took Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments, including last year’s First Four victory over Southeastern Missouri State, and when he came to WKU, in mid-March of 2023, he said he believed the Hilltoppers could contend for an NCAA Tournament berth immediately.

Turns out, he was right.

“From Day One, I’ve said our goal is to win the conference, win the conference tournament, and go to the NCAA Tournament,” Lutz said in Saturday night’s postgame press conference. “Our goals haven’t changed.”

Liberty, a prolific 3-point shooting team, hit just 8 of 36 shots (23 percent) from beyond the arc, while WKU was far more efficient, shooting 46 percent overall and 39 percent from 3-point range. Still, the Flames were very much in the game, after WKU built a lead of 13 points with about five minutes left in the game.

The Hilltoppers went ice cold at the free-throw line, late in the game, and surrendered a 3-pointer to Liberty’s Brody Peebles with 1:15 left in the game, trimming the WKU lead to 69-66. It was Peebles’ only 3-point field goal of the game — he had missed his previous five 3-pointers — before the Tops survived some anxious moments in the final seconds.

Peebles and LU teammate Kaden Metheny missed 3-pointers in the Flames’ final possession, before WKU’s Rodney Howard grabbed a rebound to seal the dramatic victory. The game had 14 lead changes and seven ties, but the Hilltoppers turned up the intensity in the second half, dictating the pace by working the ball inside.

Don McHenry, the Tops’ junior point guard from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, led WKU with 18 points and three assists. Dontaie Allen, the UK transfer, added 13 points, while Howard and Brandon Newman each finished with 11.

“We have a good basketball team, a basketball team that cares,” Lutz said. “A team that wants to win, wants to play the right way. Are we perfect? No, not by any means …

“At the end of the day, they play for the name on the front of their jersey, rather than the back of their jersey. I think that more times than not, that’s going to win you games.”

The Hilltoppers haven’t played in the NCAA Tournament since 2013, when former WKU coach Ray Harper’s squad won four games in as many days to win the Sun Belt Conference Tournament in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In seven seasons under former Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury, the Hilltoppers could do no better than two trips to the NIT, including a semifinal appearance at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2018, his second of seven seasons at WKU.

Steve Lutz has quickly created a winning culture at WKU, and you get the impression his players are buying in. They want to compete in the NCAA Tournament, too.

“All of us look at the future,” WKU’s Dontaie Allen said, “but at the end of the day, it’s about tomorrow.”

No doubt about that.