BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- Can you blame Rick Pitino? Can you blame Tubby Smith? No, not for wanting this infernal football season to go ahead and get over quickly so that their respective grid school colossi can get down to some real bidness -- alright, so Louisville did beat Florida State, and Kentucky's jowly Jared Lorenzen has become the most beguiling wide load since Refrigerator Perry hisownself.

	One more year to close the book on some unfinished business.

What Pitino and Smith -- who usually find themselves vying for the championship of the hoops-ablaze Bluegrass all by their lonesomes -- can logically be excused for is not wanting any part of the Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky. Not this season. Nor next. Nor anytime over the current millennium in which Dennis Felton keeps recruiting the daylights out of unknown and/or underappreciated young prep talent, wooing them to this leafy community that is so much closer to Music City (we're 60 miles north of Nashville, Tenn.) than it ever will be to becoming music to any opponent's ears.

And it's not simply the presence of Chris Marcus, one of the more talented 7-footers who ever stocked the pet cages at your neighborhood Wal Mart, either. Why, the All-American Marcus -- who could be the best returning center in all the land -- may not even suit up for Western's opener on the road against (hold your breath) most every expert's pre-season Number One, Arizona. Or be recovered enough from his off-season foot surgery to help the Toppers much before the Sun Belt season begins in January.

As Paul Harvey says: It's the rest of the story that should worry Messrs. Pitino, Smith, et.al. And don't they just know it.

Not only does Western return four starters from its 28-4 SBC champs (including 78 percent of both scoring and rebounding), but Felton has again loaded his roster with a slew of freshman newcomers who will contribute right away, enabling the team to platoon and platoon and platoon some more, just the way the coach likes to do. "I don't sign guys to sit the bench," says the supremely confident Felton.

Maybe because of Marcus, everybody usually stereotypes WKU as a pound-it-down-low outfit. But get this: the current Hilltoppers include players who accounted for over two thirds of one of the nation's most productive three-point shooting teams from 2000-01, a team which drained, obviously under cover of national anonymity, 198 of 279 treys, a new Sun Belt record.

They include:

David Boyden, a 6'8" angular senior slasher who took charge of the forecourt last season when Marcus (because of that bum foot) was limited to 15 games, became an all-conference player and impressed CollegeInsider.com sufficiently enough to be named that website's Most Valuable Player in the entire Sun Belt.

Patrick Sparks, one of the rookie revelations of the year, a 6'1" mean-faced customer (think Eminem without that stupid skullcap) from the mean streets of Central City, Ky., son of a coach and erstwhile Kentucky Wildcat point guard until the Kentucky Wildcats offered him not a scholarship but an opportunity to, uh, walk on? After Sparks said no, uh, thank you? he proceeded to play 22 minutes in his very first game for Western Kentucky -- I don't sign guys to sit the bench. -- which happened to be Western's earth-moving, Commonwealth-shocking 64-52 upset of Kentucky (which used four different point guards in the first half) last November 15. Oh yeah, Sparks finished the season averaging nearly 11 points a game, led the team in threes (71) and nailed a 19-footer at the buzzer to defeat New Mexico State in the semis of the SBC tournament in New Orleans.

The Bulgarian Boys of Ov -- 6'4" senior Filip Videnov, who at one point swished 10 straight trifectas in Western's 18-game winning streak (his last five at home against New Mex St and his first five on the road against Middle Tennessee) and has the most leather-wearing, exotic-looking girlfriend in Division I (another Baltic beauty, natch). And 6'9" Todor Pandov, a junior who has quadrupled his scoring production at Western and over the summer wowed pro scouts to such an extent he has now become an NBA prospect.

As noted, Felton prefers to play at least 10 student-athletes every game. No Topper just takes a blow for his teammate. No Topper plays merely insignificant minutes. The new Toppers who will contribute significantly and have the old Toppers gazing nervously over their shoulders are, freshmen all: Danny Rumph and Kevin Massiah, teammates at Maine Central Institute last year, Anthony Winchester from Austin, Ind., and Jamaal Brown from Spartanburg, S.C. The 6'2" Rumph looks like a bigtime combo guard out of Philly, which coincidentally is where he's from, while Massiah -- can't you see the headlines now? WKU Saved By A ... -- is from the sacred basketball ground of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While Winchester, who averaged nearly 35 points as a prep senior, was the runnerup for Mr. Basketball in Indiana, Brown -- who may turn out to be the most helpful of the quartet--- was South Carolina's player of the year after he led his school to his own state's championship.

"Quite a difference in talent level from when Dennis and I came here," says WKU assistant coach Pete Hermann, who has mentored some talent before, particularly David Robinson at Navy and Shaquille O'Neal at an Olympic Festival long ago. Five Topper teams ago, Felton arrived from his own assistantship at Clemson to discover an M&M&M&M of a situation, namely a mess of mostly malcontents who had actually mutinied the year before, refusing to play for Coach Matt Kilcullen.

Felton cleaned house, combed the boondocks for players, remembered the giant potential of a Charlotte high school giant reserve named Marcus and parlayed all of that into the last two brilliant seasons in which Western won 52 games and a pair of Sun Belt tournaments. Only because the Toppers have hit bottom and turned into the Atlanta Braves in the NCAA tournament -- first round losses to Florida and Stanford from eminently winnable positions (despite a nearly immobilized Marcus against Stanford"s Curtis Borchardt last March) -- has Felton stayed somewhat beneath the radar when all those coaching changes/searches begin each Spring.

Not that Tubby S or Ricky P have the interloper beneath their particular sensors. Western Kentucky's contest against Kentucky last season happened quite by accident -- not the stunning upset, the contest itself -- in that it was the first round of the "NABC Classic," one of those early season, four-team tournaments that also featured George Washington and Marshall. When Felton was contacted about the event, he made it clear to the tournament organizers that Western would be glad to participate -- but only if the Toppers could play Kentucky in the first round.

"I don't think they (Kentucky) realized what the pairings would be," Felton laughed the other day. "But Tubby's a friend of mine, a great guy. He wasn't going to duck us this time."

As it was, Smith and the 'Cats did their ducking within the game -- down the stretch of which the massive Marcus dominated the inside as Western beat their ancient non-rival rival for the first time in nearly three decades. (The 1971 NCAA tournament in which Jim McDaniels led the Toppers to the Final Four.)

"Everybody quotes that number, but they leave out the fact that we've played only a couple of other times," Felton says of the non-series series which only resumed when buddies Pitino and his former assistant Ralph Willard coached at UK and WKU.

As for Pitino scheduling Western now?

Ah, no.

The man who once patted himself on the back in one of his books -- the title of which escapes; was it The Power of Positive Dressing or something? -- about doing great things for basketball in Kentucky by playing a bunch of the state schools, has apparently changed his mind on the subject.

See, Western played Louisville at Louisville in the 2000-01 season in a home-and-home deal. So the Cards owed the Toppers a game at Bowling Green this year. "Or Nashville, we'd play 'em in Nashville too," says Felton.

But Pitino canceled. Or delayed. Or stonewalled. Whatever. (Waiting for Marcus to leave?) Bottom line, the game ain't gonna happen this year. And maybe never.

Oh, almost forgot. Western Kentucky won that game at the Ville the year before last, 68-65. Which makes the Toppers two for two against the state's hoi polloi and, until further notice, Kings of the Kommonwealth.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espn3.com.