WKU basketball loses first round bye in 75-52 loss to Old Dominion

Earlier today, I had a feeling. Coming off of last year’s season-ending performance against Georgia State, which ended in a 73-55 Panther win, I had a feeling earlier today that the Tops would do much of the same.

But, then I realized, there’s tournament seeding at stake. They had already assured their spot last year, but today there was a first-round bye at stake and a chance to snap one of the longest home wining streaks in the nation.

Well, neither happened and the Tops fell flat in crunch time, again, falling to Old Dominion 75-52 to secure themselves the #5 seed in this coming week’s Conference USA tournament.

It was all Monarchs from the get go, as the closest the Tops would ever get was 3-3 after WKU and ODU traded three pointers to open the scoring, and from there, the Monarchs went on a tear, getting out to a 10 point lead just past the halfway point of the first half, and took a dominant 40-21 lead into halftime.

The second half was more of the same, even though the Tops got their scoring legs underneath them, it was too little too late, and scoring just two points in the final 50 minutes of the game certainly didn’t help.

For WKU, outside of those you’d expect to have been a factor, there was nothing. T.J. Price lead all Toppers with 16 points while George Fant wasn’t too far behind with 15 as well as eight rebounds. The only other double figure scorer for the Tops was Chris Harrison-Docks who came alive in the second half, scoring all 11 of his final 20 minutes.

More from Bluegrass Dominion

• LAST CHANCE: Secure Over $500 in Bonus Bets with Kentucky Sign-Up Offers
• Hot Rods Win Series vs Lake County
• Hot Rods Victorious in Home Opener
• Bowling Green Hot Rods Set for Home Opener
• WKU Spring Game Should Be All Sorts of Fun

Outside of that – nothing.

scored five points and finished with six rebounds, and at one point was the

only other player on the floor

to have points and a rebound other than T.J. and George. The bench didn’t prove to be much help either, as

was the only scorer out of the six players to check into the game, with five, and the bench also combined for four rebounds. And that was it.

We’ve seen WKU basketball games this year in which they put up numbers just like that and somehow find a way to escape. That wasn’t the case tonight, thanks in part to a 27 point performance from C-USA freshmen of the year favorite Trey Freeman who dropped 27 on 10-18 shooting.

Needless to say, this wasn’t the result the Tops wanted heading into tournament week, but now at least the boys know what needs to be worked on and they can hopefully channel that unused energy (because there’s no way this was their best effort) into a deep run in Birmingham.