With the NCAA tournament tipping off this weekend, Western fans now find themselves in an unfamiliar situation.

For the past two years, they watched the Toppers pull off victories in dramatic fashion, culminating in a run to the Sweet 16 in 2008 and the round of 32 in 2009.

But there won’t be any postseason magic this year from Western, as their NCAA tournament bid was cut short by a loss to Troy in the semifinals of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament. The Toppers were also left off the list for the National Invitational Tournament, effectively ending their season.

Several fans are calling this season a disappointment, despite the team winning 21 games.

“We had the talent to run the Sun Belt this year, and we lost a lot of close games that we should’ve won,” Louisville sophomore Dennon Blankenship said. “We had two of the most productive players in WKU history and couldn’t do anything with it.”

Blankenship said the 13 losses that team had stuck out more to him than the 21 wins.

“The university keeps pushing the idea that we should be included with the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville, but if we’re going to be included in talks of state basketball, we have to perform the standards that we give ourselves, which we didn’t this year,” he said.

Louisville freshman Derrick McDonald said 21 wins is a good number, but early losses and a five-game losing streak in January were detrimental to the team’s resume.

Blankenship said fans have come to expect the team to make it to the NCAA tournament every year based on the success they’ve had in the conference and against tough non-conference competition.

“Since we’ve been pretty dominant in the conference the past three or so seasons, and the fact that we run with good teams, I think expectations are now in place,” Blankenship said.

He added that since the team underperformed this season, he thinks many Western students will lose interest and start following teams such as Kentucky and Louisville more so than Western.

Beaver Dam sophomore Travis Taylor said that even though the season was disappointing compared to the past two, he still saw positive signs for the future of the program.

“We got to see some of the talent of our freshmen like Caden Dickerson and Jamal Crook,” Taylor said. “We got to see just how good they can be. We had a couple of memorable wins along the way, too, over Vanderbilt and Mississippi State.”

Taylor said the season was still exciting, but was filled with several “ups and downs.”

“We had some pretty good wins and some disappointing losses,” he said. “Those disappointing losses showed just how important the seeding is in the conference tournament because we didn’t get the first-round bye. You could see in the second game how tired the players were, and we just didn’t have any energy to pull off the win.”