Jim Mashek

HILLTOPPERS GUARD TEAGAN MOORE: ‘IT SHOULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN TO THAT POINT …’

Hank Plona, Western Kentucky’s second-year head coach, knew this one could serve his team well when the Hilltoppers forged into the meat of their Conference USA regular-season schedule in February.

Likewise, his players.

Opportunity was knocking for the Hilltoppers in a Friday night game against the University of Tulsa, a tradition-rich squad in its own right. Western Kentucky led for nearly the entire game, but the Golden Hurricanes found a way to hang around, thanks largely to deft 3-point shooting and an ability to get to the free-throw line.

Ultimately, however, the Tops failed to seal the deal.

Senior guard Miles Barnstable drilled a 3-point field goal with just three-tenths of a second remaining, a 27-footer from the left wing, that lifted Tulsa to a dramatic 82-81 victory over the Hilltoppers before a paid crowd of 3,547 at WKU’s historic E.A. Diddle Arena.

The Hilltoppers’ bench, and the crowd on hand, immediately protested the manner in which Barnstable got such an open look at the basket, and television replays appeared to show WKU forward Grant Newell was knocked to the floor by a moving screen from Tulsa forward Tyler Behrend. Even WKU director of athletics Todd Stewart weighed in on the play, posting on Twitter that the three-man officiating crew “swallowed their whistle on the moving screen after calling every touch foul imaginable, on both teams, the entire second half …”

Be that as it may, Tulsa improved to 11-1 overall heading into Monday’s non-conference game against the University of Denver at the 8,000-seat Reynolds Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Hilltoppers, meanwhile, dropped to 7-4, after leading the Golden Hurricanes for more than 33 minutes on a cold Kentucky night. Western Kentucky won’t play again until December 29, when the Hilltoppers open Conference USA play on the road against Jacksonville State.

That’s 10 days. Ten L-O-N-G days.

Tulsa never led by more than three points, the entire night, but Miles Barnstable and the Hurricanes hit 11 of 33 shots from 3-point range, including a .500 percent showing in the second half, when they hit seven of 14 shots from behind the arc. Junior guard Tylen Riley led the Hurricanes with 18 points, while teammate Ade Popoola finished with 17.

Grant Newell, the Hilltoppers’ talented 6-foot-8 forward from Chicago, led all scorers with 28 points while adding nine rebounds in nearly 34 minutes on the floor.

“(That’s) a very tough loss … When you’re leading, down the stretch and for most of the basketball game … obviously, we didn’t close the door,” WKU coach Hank Plona said. “That part of it is a struggle, for sure.”

The Hilltoppers led by as many as five points, in the last five minutes, and grabbed a 78-77 lead on Cam Haffner’s 3-point field goal from the left wing with 27.9 seconds left in the game. Newell split on a pair of free throws with 5.2 seconds left in the game, and Tulsa got the ball to midcourt before using a timeout to set up Barnstable’s heroics with the game on the line.

Tulsa’s players exchanged barbs with Hilltoppers fans surrounding the court, and there was no handshake line as the Hurricanes celebrated their victory before a stunned Diddle Arena crowd.

“We knew (Barnstable’s 3-point attempt) was coming, but we just got caught up (on defense),” WKU swingman Teagan Moore said. “At the end of the day, it shouldn’t have gotten to that point. We were up five, and we lost (the game) in the second half …

“It shouldn’t have gotten to that point.”

That was Plona’s message, too, as the Tops surrendered 52 points after the half.

Western Kentucky took a 37-30 lead into the intermission, and Plona protested the no-call after WKU’s Armelo Boone was knocked to the floor, trying to create his own shot in the final seconds of the first half. Boone, the true freshman from Woodford County High School, had another solid game off the Hilltoppers’ bench.

Boone finished the game with 16 points, a game-high 12 rebounds and two steals. Moore added 15 points, nine rebounds and six assists, but it wouldn’t be enough against the sharpshooting squad from Oklahoma.

“We made a mistake, at the end of the game,” Newell said. “We gave up 52 points in the second half. That’s something we’ve talked about, as a team.”

Plona wasn’t happy with Tulsa’s fast start to open the second half, something the Hilltoppers have struggled with, for the first two months of the season.

“We gave up 13 points in the first three minutes of the second half,” Plona said. “We can play with anybody, but we’ve had a rough two or three weeks … We’ve struggled with our consistency.”

The Hilltoppers’ Bryant Selebangue, a 6-foot-8 senior transfer from McNeese State (Louisiana), sustained a torn Achilles tendon in a dismal 77-61 loss against former Conference USA rival Marshall University on December 10 in Huntington, West Virginia. The Tops returned to Diddle to bury NAIA member Campbellsville University, 102-59, and they had four full days to prepare for Barnstable and Tulsa’s 3-point bombers from the perimeter.

Ultimately, however, it was just another difficult defeat.

And, without a doubt, the toughest for the Hilltoppers’ 2025-26 season, to date.