Head Coach Ken McDonald set the bar high before the season.

After an imperfect start, he’s keeping it there.

The Toppers edged out Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Monday’s opening round of the National Invitational Tournament season tip-off but fell to Louisiana State 71-60 on Tuesday. Instead of heading to New York for the tournament finals, Western will host a pair of consolation games next Monday and Tuesday.

McDonald said turnovers, poor shot selection and a lack of offensive rebounding, not lack of talent, prevented Western from advancing.

“We should be going to New York,” McDonald said. “I felt like we were the best team in this pod, and I don’t back down from that. LSU outplayed us the last four minutes.

“We had a two-point lead with a little over four minutes left, and we lost by 11. They went and got it, and give them credit, but it’s extremely disappointing.”

Western fought LSU until the three-minute mark of the second half, when senior guard A.J. Slaughter sank his first field goal since leaving the game with 15 minutes to go in the first half.

Slaughter’s layup tied the game at 57, but the Tigers ended on a 16-5 run to win.

After the LSU loss, McDonald said his team’s response to scoring spurts by UWM differed from how they coped with the Tigers’ runs.

“We went down, I think, six or seven to Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and we didn’t flinch — we didn’t look like we did — we just worked the game,” McDonald said. “In the guts of the game, when it’s about to be won, you’ve got to keep it close. You’ve got to be right there. I don’t think we did that.”

Although Western comes away from the NIT’s opening round without the reward of a Thanksgiving trip to New York, junior forward Steffphon Pettigrew said the Toppers were still able to take a lot away from their first true tests.

“We learned a lot,” Pettigrew said. “This is a young team, and for the older guys, we just learned to pick the younger guys up down the stretch. Down the stretch, we just try to keep our heads up and play good team defense and offense.”

Junior forward Sergio Kerusch poured in 19 points to lead all scorers in the first half against LSU with Slaughter on the bench with two fouls for most of the half.

Despite scoring 25 points on Tuesday, Kerusch said he wasn’t going to dwell on an early loss but will train his focus back to improving instead.

“It’s back to the gym, back to practice,” Kerusch said. “We saw some things in the tournament that we liked, and we saw some things that we need to work on. I’m sure that at practice we’re going to be working on a lot of things.”

The Toppers will face Cal-State Northridge at 7 p.m. on Monday and Indiana State at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Both games will be played in Diddle Arena. Student tickets are available for $4 through Western’s ticket office.