ABILENE, Texas (BCH Sports) – The ACU Wildcats start the Western Athletic Conference tournament on Tuesday afternoon in Las Vegas.

The Wildcats finished the regular season on the struggle bus.

They lost five games in a row to close things out.

Head coach Brette Tanner’s team plays California Baptist to start the tournament.

That’s good news because the Wildcats’ last victory came in California against the Lancers.

Tanner said, “You know we’ve gone back a lot, we’ve only played them once and so I think they’re really good man and it’s a tough matchup for us. I was really worried the first time we played them just cause of matchups. We’re gonna have to do some things maybe a little bit different, we’re playing a little different than we were back then even.” Tanner added, “So, we’ve talked a little bit. We’ve worked the past few days kind of reverting back cause we’ve had some success doing some of the same things. I don’t know, I think defensively we’ve got to have a pace to us, maybe a slower pace. This is not a team that we want to get up and down and jack a bunch of shots early or make them defend. We wanna try to turn them over if we can which we haven’t done a great job of lately.”

The Wildcats open the men’s WAC Tournament on Tuesday at 2 p.m. against the Lancers.

ACU is 13-16 overall. California Baptist is 16-15.