When Crystal Kelly left Western, she left behind some big shoes to fill.

But if you ask Lady Topper head coach Mary Taylor Cowles, she’ll gladly tell you that there is still plenty of talent at Western to make up for Kelly’s absence.

“If I’m not mistaken, we still have some all-American talent in our post-game,” Cowles said. “I do think, overall, if you think about our offense and our ability, we do have several options to score this year.”

Cowles said this year’s team is fully aware that there are 22 points and 10 rebounds that are missing, and somebody had better pick up the slack for Western to be successful.

The responsibility of picking up most of that slack will fall on senior forward Dominique Duck and junior guard Kenzie Rich, both of whom averaged about 11.5 points a game last season.

Cowles said her former coach, a recent WKU Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, told her that in order to be as good as you can be, there always had to be three constants, and Cowles thinks she has those three constants.

While Kelly’s name highlighted the newspapers, and her face lit up the TV screen last season, Cowles thought Duck and Rich were true constants last season, as well as sophomore forward Arnika Brown in December.

“I’m not taking anything away from Crystal,” Cowles said. “And I would take her for four more years if I could have her, but I think that we have those constants, and I think that is a must any year.”

Kelly was not only successful on the offensive end of the court. In her last season at Western, she collected 41 steals, third highest on the team, and 33 blocks, a team record.

Duck and Rich are the only returning players who had more than 40 steals last season, and sophomore guard Amy McNear is the only other Lady Topper who collected more than 30 last season.

And as far as blocks go, Duck was the only Lady Topper, other than Kelly, with 30 or more last season. The returning player with the next highest blocks is sophomore forward Dalila Thomas with eight.

With Kelly gone, some people may think that the Lady Toppers won’t, or can’t, put the ball through the post as much as they did last season.

While watching the first couple of practices from the sidelines and recovering from an off-season knee surgery, Duck was able to see how dangerous their offense can be this season.

“We can score, and we score in a variety of ways,” Duck said. “Being on the sideline and watching the different ways we can pick our poison and score from any position on the floor, that was one of the things that I saw.”

Reach Ryan Carey at sports@chherald.com.