WKU Athletic Director Todd Stewart addresses end of the season for WKU men’s and women’s basketball

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Now that the 2024-2025 season for WKU men’s and women’s basketball has officially concluded, WKU Athletic Director Todd Stewart spoke with media on Tuesday morning to wrap some final thoughts on the teams this year.

One of the timeliest topics regarded the Lady Hilltopper team.

Head coach Greg Collins and his squad finished this season’s campaign with an overall 23-9 record and a 13-5 mark in CUSA play, tagging this year as the winningest season for the Lady Tops since the 2017-2018 season.

After earning the No. 3 seed in the 2025 Conference USA Tournament, WKU posted a 73-66 win over No. 6 FIU in the quarterfinals to advance to the semifinals, where it ultimately fell to No. 2 MTSU in that game by a score of 71-63.

In the days following the loss, the Lady Tops earned a bid to the 2025 WNIT tournament, but WKU turned down the invitation, prompting Stewart to explain the decision making behind the scenes.

“Historically, if you look at all of our sports, we have never played in the third best post-season tournament,” Stewart said. ” It’s not just a women’s basketball thing; men’s basketball has never played in the CIT or the CBI. Also, specifically to women’s basketball, that’s a program that has always competed at the highest level.”

The Lady Hilltopper basketball program has been to 20 NCAA Tournaments, including three Final Fours.

With many teams apart of the WNIT averaging below a .500 season, Stewart did not feel that specific tournament upheld the standards that a winning program competes in.

“ I just don’t think that’s competing at the highest level,” Stewart said. “I just don’t think that’s what our program has always done. I know that some people probably wish that we had done it, but I also know there’s a lot of people that are glad that we didn’t.  The number two tournament now for women’s basketball is the WBIT. If we had been offered a bid to the WBIT, we definitely would have accepted that.”

Transitioning from women’s to men’s basketball, first-year head coach Hank Plona and his Hilltopper team did not have quite the winning season that the Lady Hilltoppers did, but faced much more adversity with injuries that anyone could have predicted back in October.

WKU men’s basketball finished the year with a 17-15 overall record and 8-15 in the league.

Before CUSA play began, the Tops went 9-4 in nonconference play with notable wins over Murray State, Marshall and Lipscomb.

However, injuries across the roster soon began to seep onto the court for WKU, and Stewart believes losing forward Babacar Faye was the unfortunate turning point for the year.

“While injuries are part of the game, some injuries are just hard to overcome, and I think the Babacar Faye injury just became too much to overcome,” Stewart said. “We overcame it at times, but consistently we didn’t. I think we were 10-12 after he got hurt, and if you look prior to that, we were playing extremely well.”

While incorporating these factors into evaluating Plona in his first year as head coach for the Tops, Stewart was satisfied with the season he had based on the obstacles he was forced to work with.

“I think the way he (Plona) navigated this year, with everything I just explained, and really the role he had last year, I mean, talk to Steve Lutz, he would tell you that we would not have had the season we had last year were it not for Hank Plona, so I’m excited to see the roster he builds for next season, and see him leading this program moving forward.”