— By Bill Cornwell
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — The Marshall and Western Kentucky basketball teams are going to get quite familiar with each other this week.
The Herd and Hilltoppers, who have developed one of the best rivalries in Conference USA, meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Cam Henderson Center for the first of two consecutive meetings. The teams are ‘travel partners’ during the C-USA season and face the same opponents most weeks.
WKU and Marshall will meet again Saturday at 7:30 p.m., at Diddle Arena in Bowling Green, Ky.
Both teams enter tonight’s game off a win. Marshall beat Old Dominion 68-67 in Huntington, while Western Kentucky picked up a home win over Charlotte 80-63 — which marked the first conference loss for the 49ers.
Western Kentucky (12-6) is off to a hot start in league play with a 5-1 record. The Hilltoppers trail league leader North Texas by only a half game.
Marshall is 3-3 in C-USA play and 9-10 overall. The Herd is tied with UAB, UTSA and Old Dominion in the middle of the league standings.
Western was the preseason favorite to win Conference USA in large part due to the return of sophomore and potential All-American center Charles Bassey. The Hilltoppers’ fortunes changed on Dec. 7 when Bassey went down with a season-ending knee injury in an 86-79 overtime win over Arkansas.
“This team runs, so transition is going to be a big problem,” Marshall head coach Dan D’Antoni said. “Their center is small — 6-5 at best — but he runs and he can shoot threes. It should be interesting to see how our bigs handle that and they handle our bigs.”
The Hilltoppers top scorer is junior guard Taveion Hollandsworth, who is averaging 14.9 points per game. Other double-figure scorers are junior forward Carson Williams and senior guard/forward Jared Savage. Williams is WKU’s top rebounder at 6.4 per game.
Savage and IUPUI transfer Camron Justice are 3-point shooting threats for Western and have D’Antoni’s attention. Justice played against Marshall last season in a CIT postseason tournament game won by the Herd.
Marshall’s top scorers remain sophomore guard Taevion Kinsey (15.8 ppg), junior guard Jared West (14.6 ppg) and sophomore center Iran Bennett (10.1 ppg). Bennett is also the Herd’s top rebounder (5.7 rpg).
Western leads the all-time series 16-12 and the clubs split two games last season.