By Daniel Johnson, Sports Editor

The men’s basketball team has lost 10 of its last 11 games, including an 89-76 loss to Eastern New Mexico on Wednesday. But head coach Jason Copeland isn’t ready to write off the season just yet.

“You can start counting the days or can make the days count,” Copeland said.

ACU’s days in conference play are limited, as they have three games remaining on the schedule. ACU would need to win those last three games, and other teams would have to lose to give the last-place Wildcats a chance at making the postseason for the first time since the 1997-98 season.

“You don’t ever want to think that you don’t have a chance,” said guard Riley Lambert. “If you think that, you don’t have any desire to play the game.”

But Copeland said despite the slim possibility of a postseason appearance, he is just focused on playing West Texas A&M on Saturday.

“We can’t worry about that,” Copeland said. “We just got to get ready to play Saturday against a good West Texas team.”

West Texas is likely to make the postseason with its 7-2 conference record and tied with Midwestern for first in the Lone Star Conference South Division. The Buffs beat the Wildcats 78-69 the first time the two met this season. 

Lambert said the key to victory against West Texas is playing hard all 40 minutes of the game.

“We just need to play a complete game,” Lambert said. “We really haven’t played a complete game all year.”

ACU is coming off of its second loss this season to Eastern New Mexico. The Javelinas carried the momentum in both halves, as the Wildcats couldn’t recover from the 20-12 Javelina run in the first half.

“We dug us a little hole, and that hole continued to grow throughout the game,” Lambert said.

Copeland attributed the loss to the more than 50 points in the paint the Wildcats allowed.

“We gave them too many easy looks inside,” Copeland said.

Forward Igor Vrzina led the Wildcats in scoring with 18 as three other Wildcats scored in the double digits against Eastern: guards Philip Brooks (17), Cortnie Ross (13) and Elmo Williams (10).

Regardless of the trouble ACU has encountered at the back end of its season, Copeland said he has seen progress from his team since last year.

“We’re still trying to build a program, so we’re just trying to continue to get better,” Copeland said.

So far, 10-13 ACU already has two more overall wins than last year’s team but has only won one conference match-up; last season ACU won four.

“We’re trying to make every day count that we have left,” Copeland said.