Shelbyville senior guard A.J. Slaughter (left) and Elizabethtown junior forward Steffphon Pettigrew (right) fight Middle Tennessee's James Washington for the ball during the game at Diddle Arena Saturday, January 23, 2009. Saturday's loss was their first regular-season loss to MTSU since 1977. CODY DUTY/HERALD

Two months ago Western was voted a nearly-unanimous preseason pick to win the Sun Belt Conference, and Head Coach Ken McDonald said this was the season when the Toppers had enough talent to make a serious splash on the national scene.

Even through recent struggles, McDonald still believes Western (11-8, 4-4 Sun Belt) is best in the conference.

But the second-year coach is experiencing losing en masse for the first time.

“It is a little bit uncharted,” McDonald said after the Toppers lost the third of three straight Sun Belt games Saturday in an 84-74 defeat to Middle Tennessee. “We talk a lot about this, and we think we’re the better team…

“We don’t put together 40-minute efforts. That’s the bottom line in terms of us getting it done.”

And as the losses pile up, so do the milestones.

It’s the first time since the 1998-1999 season that Western is working on a three-game conference losing streak.

Saturday’s loss to MTSU also marked the first season sweep of the Toppers by the Blue Raiders since 1975 as well as the first regular-season MTSU victory in Diddle Arena since 1977.

To top things off, Western is now two games behind the Sun Belt East Division-leading Blue Raiders — just a small part of a humbling season, according to McDonald.

“My mentor’s saying is ‘proud peacock today, feather duster tomorrow,’” McDonald said. “And there’s no question that we’re a big feather duster right now.”

Even though the team has lost the chance to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, senior forward Jeremy Evans said he isn’t ready to concede his final shot at making the tournament.

As he has many times this season, Evans went back to Western’s preseason motto — that the Toppers have a target on the back of their shirts — as a rallying point.

“We want the target to still continue to be on Western Kentucky,” Evans said. “We always say we own the conference now. We want that to stay the same from here on out.”

The Toppers will have to play 40 minutes of solid basketball to show the superior talent McDonald promised and rise to his expectations.

Slow starts have been Western’s calling card, leading to second-half comebacks that sometimes fall short. But during the loss against Troy last week the Toppers were out-scored 42-28 in the second half after breaking out to a nine-point first-half lead.

Senior guard A.J. Slaughter said Western needs to get back to its old ways, scratching and clawing for every win to capitalize on this season’s talent.

“We’ve just got to come out and fight every night,” Slaughter said. “I still feel like we’re the best team in this league, and there’s no doubt in my mind that we can win it again this year.”

Senior forward Dominique Duck looks for an open teammate as she holds off Middle Tennessee’s defense Sunday. The Lady Toppers fell to the Lady Raiders 88-63, bringing their overall record to 11-8 and 5-3 in the Sun Belt Conference. CODY DUTY/Herald

Just when the Lady Toppers look to be on the right track, up comes a bump in the road.

And it’s a story that Western (11-8, 5-3 Sun Belt Conference) is getting tired of hearing.

After beginning the season 3-0, the Lady Toppers faltered throughout the Caribbean Challenge in Cancun, Mexico, going 0-2. After beating George Washington and Louisiana Lafayette over winter break, they fell 88-78 at South Alabama.

And after winning four straight games over the last two weeks, they hit another hurdle Sunday in the form of an 88-63 loss to Middle Tennessee in Diddle Arena.

The defeat was Western’s worst home loss in Head Coach Mary Taylor Cowles’ eight years at the helm, and it was one that left the Lady Toppers stunned.

“It hurts,” senior forward Dominique Duck said. “Middle is not 26, 27 points better than us by any means at all. I don’t have any words to explain it.”

Cowles was clearly not happy with a Lady Topper defense that allowed MTSU to shoot 53.6 percent, and she said effort has to become more consistent if the team has any postseason aspirations.

“If we want to be a champion like we want to be at the end of the season, we have to beat teams like (MTSU),” Cowles said. “With 10 games left, we continue to take it one game at a time in regular season and try to put ourselves in the best position come tournament time.

“It’s extremely disappointing. There’s absolutely no excuse for the way we showed up and played tonight, especially defensively.”

If the Lady Toppers are going to make a strong push towards March, now is the time. They play five of their next seven games in Diddle Arena, which Duck says they have to use to their advantage.

“A lot of teams have to come in, and they don’t understand that our crowd is our sixth man, and we feed off of them,” Duck said. “There’s no other atmosphere like Diddle Arena in the Sun Belt, and a lot of teams struggle with that.”

But that crowd didn’t faze MTSU, which touted a six-player rotation and had three Lady Raiders with at least 21 points.

Junior guard Amy McNear said that’s why it’s time for Western to get back to the defensive principles that helped it rattle off a four-game win streak.

“Those four games came back to defense,” McNear said. “We’ve got to focus on defense — defense wins games. If we focus on that and box out and rebound, we’ll be alright.”

At 5-3 in the Sun Belt East, a division title looks unlikely for the Lady Toppers. But that doesn’t make their ultimate goals any less lofty.

“We’ve just got to take it one game at a time,” Duck said. “Our mindset doesn’t really change. We can still reach the goal of being Sun Belt champs at the end of the tournament, and we’ve just got to keep playing and fight for that.”

Western next hosts North Texas at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Diddle Arena.

Though the Lady Toppers’ season ended in disappointing fashion, Head Coach Travis Hudson said he’s confident in the future of his program.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Hudson said. “We will be right back here next year.”

The Lady Toppers (25-9, 13-4 Sun Belt Conference) lost to eventual Sun Belt Tournament champion Middle Tennessee State in four sets (21-25, 25-23, 15-25, 24-26) in their semifinal match on Friday.

“We put it all out there but just couldn’t close it out,” sophomore middle hitter Tiffany Elmore said. “It was sad to see the seniors go out like that.”

Freshman outside hitter Jordyn Skinner said the team hoped to defeat the Blue Raiders in part because of the all-Sun Belt team selections.

MTSU had four players on the first and second teams while Elmore, a second-team selection, was the only Western player honored.

“Everyone had it in the back of their head,” Skinner said. “We wanted to prove we could do it.”

Hudson said that, even though the team only had one player on the all-Sun Belt teams, the “scrubs can still play.”

Skinner and senior outside hitter Abbie Siljendahl played most of the match with injuries. Skinner hit her head in the second set and Siljendahl rolled her ankle in the third.

“The kids persevered the whole game and continued to battle,” Hudson said. “I’m extremely proud of them for that.”

Even though the Lady Toppers advanced to the tournament semifinals, Hudson said hopes for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament are slim because the Sun Belt will likely send both MTSU and Florida International to the tournament.

FIU’s loss to MTSU in the Sun Belt championship match was its first conference loss all season.

Though the end result didn’t turn out how the Lady Toppers would have liked, Skinner said she’s excited for next season.

“Things didn’t go our way in the tournament, but next year is a new year,” Skinner said.

Western will return four starters but also graduates four players: Siljendahl, middle hitter Brittany Bowen, defensive specialist Lindsey Gould and outside hitter Aquila Orr.

But with four highly-touted freshman coming in for the 2010 season, Hudson said he isn’t concerned with the loss of talent.

“We definitely have one of the best freshman classes coming in,” Hudson said. “I’m excited to see how they mesh with what we have now.”

Hudson said despite the outcome of the Lady Toppers’ match against MTSU, this season’s team was still championship-worthy.

“This team was just remarkable from start to finish,” Hudson said.

Head Coach Ken McDonald said this year’s Western basketball team has the potential to go places.

Without playing a regular-season game, it already has.

The Toppers’ 12-man roster represents nine different states as well as Canada and Montenegro. Junior forward Sergio Kerusch said those vastly different backgrounds haven’t stopped the team from becoming a tightly-knit bunch heading into the season.

“We’re a unit, and we’re in the process of becoming a family,” Kerusch said. “We’re brothers, basically. We see each other more than we see our own parents and everything. We have to bond and have each other’s backs.”

This summer, McDonald dismissed incoming freshmen Terrence Boyd, Western’s highest-rated recruit, and David Laury from the team less than a month after the two arrived on campus.

Both Boyd and Laury had been viewed as assets to the team’s future, but McDonald said the bad may have outweighed the good concerning certain pieces of the incoming class.

“In recruiting, you want talent, but you want that chemistry,” McDonald said. “If you have guys that you’re worried about with the chemistry, you either try to mentor them or you get rid of them. The guys that we have right now in the program all get along great, and I’m proud to say that we have a chance to be a very good team because of that — because of the chemistry.”

What’s left of this year’s class will still contribute, McDonald said.

Junior college transfer Cliff Dixon will get any minutes that Laury would have played. With the presence of senior guard A.J. Slaughter, Boyd may have been more of a luxury than a necessity, he said.

More important is that four of the team’s five returning starters should be able to accomplish more in less time this season after a year of working together, Slaughter said.

“It has a lot to do with chemistry, talent level and just experience,” he said. “Guys that were there last year know what it takes.”

McDonald said like last season, when the Toppers sputtered to an early 1-2 record but recovered to finish 25-9, the coaching staff’s push for better team chemistry doesn’t end when the season begins.

And the second-year head coach will enjoy the benefit of his efforts — camaraderie.

“It’s always a lot of fun to see different guys hanging out with each other,” McDonald said. “You’ll see (freshman guard) Jamal Crook with (senior center) Nemenja (Milosevic), and it just cracks you up, because they’re just different.”