Head Coach Ken McDonald made many lofty predictions before this season started — predictions that relied on Western playing team defense and, in turn, taking better shots on the offensive end.

That’s the kind of game the Toppers played against Troy last Saturday, holding the Trojans to 15.8 percent 3-point shooting while dropping 12 3-pointers themselves at a 46.2 percent click.

The challenge now, according to senior guard A.J. Slaughter, is doing it again when Western (13-11) meets Houston (11-11) at 7 p.m. Tuesday night in Diddle Arena for both squads’ final non-conference game of the 2009-2010 regular season.

Slaughter said the Toppers have plenty of positives to expand on from last weekend.

“This is a tape that we can always look back on to say, ‘Guys, we can do it. We did it here against one of the top teams in the league,’” Slaughter said. “It’s really a big confidence boost knowing we can do it, but now the challenge is doing it over and over again.”

Although Western will step out of Sun Belt Conference play for a night, the words “confidence” and “pride” were thrown around by junior forward Sergio Kerusch after the Troy game. The Trojans entered leading the Sun Belt’s East Division and left trailing Middle Tennessee.

The Toppers sit in fourth place, three games behind the Blue Raiders. But in Kerusch’s mind, Western should still play as if it’s in first.

“We’re still champions from last year, and we’re just going to go for it and fight and take it one game at a time,” Kerusch said. “We still believe in us, and we’re going to continue to bond together as family and go do what we do.”

Houston is led by a duo of senior guards — Aubrey Coleman and Kelvin Lewis — who combine to score more than 40 points per game.

McDonald said Western can run with the guard-oriented Cougars if the Toppers can replicate their first-half performance from last Saturday, when the Toppers forced 18 deflections in 20 minutes.

“I really think that your defense takes a lot of pressure off the offensive end,” McDonald said. “I really think that if you can make it hard for the other team to score, you’re in a position to have a lead — build a lead — and you have a lot more confidence on the offensive end because every possession isn’t so much pressure to score the basketball.”

Western has plenty of chances to get the bitter taste of defeat out of its mouth, playing a stretch of four games in a week. A showdown with the Cougars marks the second of those four games — which junior forward Steffphon Pettigrew said is an ideal time for the Toppers to put a collective foot down.

“We were just tired of losing,” Pettigrew. “We’ve been getting at each other in practice, and it showed (against Troy). That was by far our best effort — a complete 40 minutes.”