The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 25-9 (Sun Belt: 15-3)

2009-2010's toughest games: at South Carolina, at Vanderbilt, at Louisville

Primary attraction: Can the Hilltoppers make a deep NCAA tournament run for the third consecutive year?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Sweet 16 or bust? -- Expectations should be high in Bowling Green. The Hilltoppers have won games in each of last two NCAA tournaments. After pulling the non-upset upset over No. 5 seed Illinois in the first round of last year's tournament, A.J. Slaughter and Orlando Mendez-Valdez led Western Kentucky to within one shot of besting No. 4. This year, Mendez-Valdez is gone, but Slaughter, the preseason Sun Belt Player of the Year is expected to shoulder the load.

2. Can McDonald avoid sophomore slump? -- When Darrin Horn left Western Kentucky after leading his team to the 2008 Sweet 16, there was expected to be a first-year drop-off when new coach Ken McDonald came in with a new system after coaching under Rick Barnes at Texas. Obviously, that didn't happen. Now that McDonald is in his second year, will the Hilltoppers show improvement as McDonald becomes more familiar or will the team regress and fall back to the pack in the Sun Belt? 

3. What's a hilltopper? -- Surely there's a better reason that Western Kentucky is called the Hilltoppersthan the fact that the school sits atop a hill, right? Wrong. That's exactly why they're named the Hilltoppers. (Interesting then that Duke isn't named the Cesspools -- I kid, I kid.) Western Kentucky sits atop one of the highest points in southern Kentucky, hence the name. The women's basketball team is nicknamed the Lady Toppers, a fact which I'm reluctantly going to leave alone.

The Drake!: First round, 2008 NCAA tournament. This is why college basketball is the greatest game there is: