Head Coach Ken McDonald said he constantly tells the Toppers that they shouldn’t settle for a good shot when they could instead take a great shot.

The 2009-2010 season was expected to be one great shot, but instead Western (21-13) fell to Troy 54-48 in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament’s semifinals.

The Toppers missed out on invitations to the NCAA and National Invitational tournaments as a result, coming up short of McDonald’s expectations to build on a tournament experience in his first year as coach.

“We have a good basketball team, and we had certain expectations from the start of the season,” McDonald said. “We put that out there and on ourselves, and honestly, things didn’t go exactly as you script it. But you have to make it go your way. There were times this year that we didn’t make it go our way.”

Senior guard A.J. Slaughter said unfortunate situations such as Western’s all happen for a reason.

Slaughter said he won’t remember the disappointments, the letdowns and the losses as much as he’ll remember how the Toppers handled all of them.

“That’s what I’m going to look back most on — that we stuck together, and it was a brotherhood,” Slaughter said. “When our backs were against the wall, we just fought.”

Falling short of expectations started with an early loss to Louisiana State, forcing the Toppers to miss the NIT Tip-off in New York City. Then Western lost to Indiana State, breaking its home-win streak that ran through all of last season.

Also, junior forward Sergio Kerusch went down with a broken foot before the Toppers’ loss to Louisville in December.

From there, Western’s at-large fate in the NCAA tournament was sealed. But the Toppers weren’t done, finishing with a 9-3 record upon Kerusch’s return.

“We really turned it around,” McDonald said. “I think it’s a true testament of the character and the work ethics of the players and the coaching staff that we turned it around. We hit some tough stretches for WKU basketball, and I think everyone knows that.”

Throughout a five-game losing streak in February, McDonald repeatedly said his team just wasn’t playing hard enough.

Kerusch echoed that, saying the effort sometimes wasn’t there.

But by the time Western eventually took its final blow to Troy on March 8, Kerusch said the Toppers were no longer disappointed in themselves — just satisfied with the effort.

“You saw a team just lay it all out there,” Kerusch said. “The end result was that we just couldn’t pull it out that time.”

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — The Toppers didn’t partake in any more late theatrics or postgame celebrations Monday night at Summit Arena, because they did something in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament they haven’t done in three seasons.

Lose.

Troy senior forward Richard Delk hit a 3-pointer with 13.2 seconds to play, giving the Trojans (20-11) a two-possession lead and a 54-48 win.

Western (21-13) came back from 16 points down in the first half to lead 49-48 with 4:30 to play, but Troy held the Toppers scoreless from that point on. Head Coach Ken McDonald called Western’s performance a tale of two halves.

“I didn’t think our defensive intensity and our rebounding effort was there in the first half, and it dug us a pretty good hole,” McDonald said. “I think in the second half, we fought pretty hard to get back in position to win the game and just couldn’t finish it out.”

With a loss to Troy, the fourth-seeded Toppers end a run in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament in the semifinal round, and according to Western officials, will not accept a postseason bid to anything but the NCAA or National Invitational Tournament.

In all likelihood, Monday night’s game will be the last for seniors A.J. Slaughter, Jeremy Evans, Anthony Sally and Nemanja Milosevic. Despite scoring only five points in his final collegiate game, Slaughter said he came away with positives through a rough senior year.

“It’s been up and down, but the biggest thing I look at all the time is that we stuck together and fought through the hard times,” Slaughter said. “That’s what I’m going to look back most on — that we stuck together.”

And Western did some of that sticking together against Troy.

The Toppers trailed the Trojans 40-25 at the half but cut the deficit to four points when junior forward Steffphon Pettigrew hit a 3-pointer with 13:33 to play. Western then took its only second-half lead at the 4:43 mark of the second half on a Slaughter 3-pointer — three of his five total points — but lost the lead on the other end when a Delk layup made it 49-48 in the Trojans’ favor.

Troy added another layup and Delk’s 3-pointer to finish out the game on a 7-0 run.

“We played our hearts out the second half,” junior forward Sergio Kerusch said. “We cut the lead down. You saw a team just lay it all out there, and the end result was that we just couldn’t pull it out this time.”

Throughout Troy’s second-half collapse, the Trojans shot 24.1 percent from the field.

Slaughter insisted that the Toppers’ own shooting woes — where they went a combined 4-of-24 from 3-point range and shot 37.5 percent on field goals for the game — wasn’t about playing a third game in as many days.

“It was definitely some execution stuff, some miscommunication,” Slaughter said.

Western put itself down and nearly out early on, as the Toppers trailed 15-5 at the 14:25 mark of the first half. The Troy lead grew to as many as 16 points before the first 20 minutes had passed, and Troy’s Brandon Hazzard finished the half with a game-high 17 points.

Pettigrew led the Toppers with 14 points, and Kerusch added 12 in what McDonald called a “difficult” end to a season that began with so much hope.

“This is a tough day if you’re a part of the program — no question,” McDonald said. “As a coaching staff, from the team standpoint and the fan standpoint.

“This is a tough day, but we will be back.”

Senior guard Anthony Sally celebrates with Head Coach Ken McDonald after the Toppers' first game of the Sun Belt tournament in Hot Springs, Ark. Click image for a full slideshow. CHRIS WILSON/HERALD

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — Even in the smallest of gyms, the Toppers sensed they were playing on their biggest stage yet on Saturday night.

And after 20 minutes, they finally showed it.

Western (20-12, 12-6 Sun Belt Conference) overcame a shaky first half to pull away from New Orleans, notching an 83-58 win in the first round of the Sun Belt tournament.

In front of just a few hundred fans at the Hot Springs Convention Center Court — with an overwhelming majority of them wearing Western red — junior forward Sergio Kerusch said the raised, green seats, low ceiling and small-time atmosphere turned out to be a positive.

“It was different, but we had a great crowd — plus we had great fan support,” Kerusch said. “It made us feel right back at home, so this is like a Diddle (Arena) on the road.”

The No. 4-seeded Toppers — who reached 20 wins for the 40th time in program history with the win — will next face No. 5 seed Arkansas State in the quarterfinal round of the Sun Belt tournament at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, this time at Summit Arena.

Western beat the Red Wolves both at home and on the road already this season, but Head Coach Ken McDonald said he’s not concerned with who the Toppers’ next opponent is — so long as they have a next opponent.

“I told the guys to put their hand up — put a one up after the game,” McDonald said. “One game down, and all we have is one left, and that’s the way we have to act. We have to have that sense of urgency. We have to understand that everything we want is right in front of us if we just take care of one game.

“And that’s how we’re going to treat it.”

Senior guard A.J. Slaughter hit a pair of 3-pointers out of the half to give New Orleans (8-22, 3-16 Sun Belt) its biggest deficit of the game at 37-25, and things only got worse for the Privateers.

New Orleans pulled to within nine points with 13:37 to play, but Western tacked up a margin the Privateers couldn’t match only a few minutes later. A 17-0 run over the course of five minutes pushed the Toppers’ lead out to 75-46 with just under three minutes to play.

Slaughter thanked a conversation in the locker room for the runaway victory.

“We talked about just the position we were in — kind of the same situation as last year being up at the half,” Slaughter said. “Just doing it with our defense — that’s basically what we talked about at halftime.”

Slaughter said Western started taking only what the defense would give up, leading him to finish with 13 points, Kerusch with 16 and junior forward Steffphon Pettigrew to score a team-high 18 points. The Toppers shot 67.9 percent from the field in the second half and 56.4 percent for the game.

New Orleans sophomore guard Charles Carmouche led all scorers with 21 points.

The lead changed five times in the first half before Western spurted out to a 31-25 advantage at the break. Once the lead jumped past 10 in the second half, McDonald looked to his bench for relief.

After explaining what it meant to follow five starters with Sun Belt tournament rings onto the court, McDonald said he was impressed with how the backups fared.

“I think it’s huge, because we’re going to need them at some point throughout this tournament if we’re going to make a run,” McDonald said.

Freshman guard Caden Dickerson played 17 minutes, junior forward Cliff Dixon played 15 minutes and freshman guard Jamal Crook logged eight — all off the bench.

With less than 24 hours before another one-and-done tournament game, McDonald said the Toppers now have to prepare for a fresh gameplan.

“We’ve got to lock into the scouting report,” McDonald said “If it’s a game of matchups, we’re going to have to get our personnel back in tact tonight and understand we’re going to have to play good basketball.”

Click here for a slideshow from Saturday night’s game.

Short-term goals — such as earning a No. 3 seed in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament — didn’t work out the way Western wanted last Saturday .

But entering this weekend’s tournament, the Toppers (19-12, 12-6 Sun Belt) are in a position to control their own destiny in a win-or-go-home environment.

With the season’s long-term goal of an NCAA Tournament berth on the line, junior forward Sergio Kerusch said that’s the way Western prefers to compete.

“We used to have our backs against the wall when we had that five-game losing streak,” Kerusch said. “Play every game as if its your last — that’s the mindset the team’s picked up.”

The Toppers needed a number of scenarios to fulfill themselves in order to clinch a first-round bye in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, and in the end it came down to needing an Arkansas State win over Troy.

But the Trojans won, putting Western at a No. 4 seed. The Toppers will play New Orleans at 6:45 p.m. Saturday, a month after knocking off the Privateers 75-56.

Head Coach Ken McDonald said he’s been in the college basketball business long enough to know Western can’t overlook New Orleans.

“It’s do or die time,” McDonald said. “We’re just going to take every game one at a time and act like it’s our last game. If we do that, I like our chances of advancing.”

Should the Toppers move on they’ll face the winner of Arkansas State vs. Arkansas-Little Rock on Sunday.

But before then, McDonald said the Toppers hope to improve upon a few aspects of their game, especially their free-throw shooting, which nearly lost them last Thursday’s game at Florida Atlantic.

Junior forward Sergio Kerusch shot a combined 2-of-7 against FAU and FIU, and junior forward Steffphon Pettigrew missed a pair of free throws with the game on the line at the end of regulation against the Owls.

Kerusch said he’ll focus on hitting his free throws.

“The last two games, I’ve been missing a lot of free throws,” Kerusch said. “I’ve got to get back in the gym and work on those when we get back to (Bowling Green).”

It’s hard to dismiss what Kerusch has done for the Toppers away from the free throw line. The junior poured in a career-high 32 points Saturday night to go with senior guard A.J. Slaughter’s 13 points.

The two are leading Western in its peak six-game winning streak.

“My play has elevated to where I want it to be,” Slaughter said.

Kerusch said he’s “blessed by God” to be playing at all after suffering a broken right foot.

Though Western controls its own destiny through it postseason ventures, Kerusch said God is a Tops fan just in case.