In debut season as WKU men’s hoops coach, Hank Plona faces a balancing act

After eight ultra-successful seasons as men’s basketball head coach at Iowa’s Indian Hills Community College, Hank Plona signed on last year as an assistant on the coaching staff of then-new Western Kentucky University head man Steve Lutz.

“To me, I was giving up being a head coach,” Plona said Monday. “I was making a decision to get in (NCAA) Division I. ... I was like, ‘All right, I am going to change my life.’”

It can be funny how things play out.

After Lutz ended a WKU March Madness drought that reached back to 2013 this past March by leading the Hilltoppers (22-12) to a berth in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, the Western coach’s name became linked with the head coaching vacancy at Oklahoma State.

In the “five or six” days in which it took the Cowboys and Lutz to close a deal, Plona says he began to realize that he had a viable chance to become the WKU head coach.

“Obviously, we did make the (NCAA) tournament last year, and I think there was a lot of momentum to try to keep this team together,” Plona says. “There were a lot of people who kind of supported me getting the job. (From that point), I certainly pursued it with everything I had.”

WKU athletics director Todd Stewart likens the decision to stay in house and elevate Plona to replace Lutz to the move he made to hire then-Western football assistant Jeff Brohm to replace Bobby Petrino as Hilltoppers head coach after the 2013 season.

Noting that Brohm proceeded to go 30-10 and win three bowl games in his three seasons as WKU head man, Stewart says, “I hope the outcome turns out to be the same.”

Even though Plona, 38, won a ridiculous 86.5 percent of his games (225-35) in his eight seasons as head coach at Indian Hills, Stewart says he was not familiar with the coach until Lutz brought him to Bowling Green as an assistant.

“Steve Lutz spoke very highly of Hank Plona all season long,” Stewart says. “When Steve and I would meet and we would talk about the program, he would always be very quick to point out ‘Hank’s doing this. Hank’s involved here. And Hank is in charge of this.’ So I knew how highly Steve thought of him.

“Then I could just see with my own eyes the way Hank interacted with our players and the respect they had for him.”

Job one for Plona as WKU head man was keeping the core of last season’s Conference USA Tournament championship team intact. It is a mission that has been mostly accomplished.

Veteran guard Brandon Newman followed Lutz to Oklahoma State. Outside shooting specialist and ex-Kentucky Wildcat Dontaie Allen has transferred to Wyoming. But at least eight of the Hilltoppers’ other key players from last season are returning to WKU.

That includes guard Don McHenry (team-high 15.1 points a game last season), the Conference USA tourney MVP. Also back will be forward Tyrone Marshall (8.8 ppg, 4.5 rebounds), who had 21 points, six rebounds, five assists and two blocks in WKU’s 87-69 loss to Marquette in the NCAA Tournament round of 64.

Former Owen County High School star Taegan Moore gave WKU a solid freshman season (6.2 ppg, 2.3 rpg) last year. Plona hopes the 6-foot-5 sophomore-to-be rediscovers his outside shooting touch in his second year as a collegian. After making 41.1 percent on 3-pointers as an Owen County senior, Moore hit only 21.7 percent of his 3-point tries for Western in 2023-24.

“We expect him to really shoot it,” Plona says. “I think if Taegan can make 1.5, 2 3’s a game — which he has the ability to do — it will really open up the rest of his game.”

Among the newcomers Western will welcome in 2024-25 is hometown prep star Kade Unseld, one of the standouts of Warren Central’s 2023 Kentucky boys high school hoops state championship team.

“He wins,” Plona says of the 6-5 Unseld. “He understands what goes into winning. On top of that, he’s an elite-level shooter. That doesn’t hurt, either.”

One highlight of Plona’s first season as the WKU head man will come early when the Hilltoppers are scheduled to travel to Lexington to face Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats.

Western fans have been telling him, Plona says, about the 2001-02 meeting between WKU and UK when the Hilltoppers upset the No. 4 Wildcats 64-52 at Rupp Arena behind 13 points and 10 rebounds from 7-footer Chris Marcus.

“I don’t see any negatives,” Plona says of playing UK. “If the negative is it’s going to be a hard game, well, good. Our point in November and December, we want to put ourselves in position to improve.”

An Avon, Connecticut, native who launched his college basketball trek serving as a team manager and then a graduate assistant at Providence College under Tim Welsh and then Keno Davis, Plona understands his first year as a Division I head man will involve a continuity balancing act.

“I am going to be myself. I am not Steve Lutz. He is not me,” Plona says. “There will be a little bit of a different voice, a different personality. ... At the same time, we did a lot of things (last season) that really worked. So there is a continuity we want to continue to build.”

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