After losing to Houston 73-64 on Saturday, Toppers coach Ken McDonald said that the focus is squarely on one team.

“It’s about us right now,” McDonald said Monday. “It’s about us improving. It really doesn’t matter at this point whether we’re playing Louisville or Cambellsville. We have to get better in order to do the thing we can do and be the best team we can be.”

Western’s next opponent, Cambellsville, may take some inspiration from the Topper’s last performance against a non-Division I team.

Western narrowly escaped defeat at the hands of Bellarmine 70-65 in an exhibition on Nov. 8. The Knights, a Division II team, had the lead by as many as nine points in the game before the Toppers were able to come back and win.

Senior guard Orlando Mendez-Valdez is also reflecting after the performance in the last couple of games.

“A lot of the mistakes that were made and seen on film were things that we could control,” Mendez-Valdez said.

“Most of it was all effort. Watching the tape we could see ourselves looking fatigued or tired, I’m not sure what it was. There were a lot of times where we were down by one, and it looked like we were down by 20.”

This will also be the second game the Toppers will play without senior guard A.J. Slaughter, who has to sit out this contest in addition to the Houston game because of eligibility issues.

This is just the latest in Western’s struggles with depth because of injuries and other eligibility issues.

Sophomore forward Steffphon Pettigrew, who logged 37 minutes against Houston, said that cohesion is improving and the team just has to execute down the stretch.

“We just have to put everything together,” Pettigrew said. “Even though we’re low in numbers, we just have to play as a team. Everybody has been playing together and picking each other up. Our chemistry is building each and every day in practice.”

The Toppers will also be looking to limit turnovers. Western turned the ball over 20 times, which led to 23 Houston points.

Despite all this, McDonald said that the team is improving and will look to get in the win column tonight.

“Absolutely, we took strides forward,” McDonald said after the Houston game. “But I think the focus was good in practice this week–, – we got better each day, and today we came out and put ourselves in a position to win the basketball game.”

The Toppers play their first home game at 7 p.m. tonight Diddle Arena.