LAKE CHARLES – McNeese will enter Thursday's 7 p.m. Southland Conference game against Abilene Christian with a "must-win" attitude if it wants to make a run at the league's postseason tournament.
 
The Cowboys (7-17, 4-9 SLC) sit in 12^th place while ACU, who along with Incarnate Word, is not eligible for postseason play, is 5-8 in the conference and 11-13 overall. McNeese is two games out in the loss column from the eighth and final spot for the postseason tournament with five games remaining.
 
"All the games from here on out are must wins in our book," said head coach Dave Simmons. "When you play a team like ACU, and you play them just once, you have to beat them then hope they beat everyone else they play, especially since they cannot go to the tournament."
 
McNeese has dropped three straight games and six of its last seven, including three straight at home.
 
"All home games should be a must win," said Simmons. "But now that we've lost our last two, we have to win the remaining three and hope to get something on the road."
 
Southeastern Louisiana, who sits at 6-7 and in eighth place in the league, is the team the Cowboys are trying to catch. However, the Lions hold the tiebreaker over McNeese via their 79-75 win over the Cowboys back on Jan. 15 in Hammond. The two teams do not play again.
 
"We're going into the game looking at what we need to do to win," said Simmons.  
The standings will take care of themselves. We're still in control if we win our games. We just need to take it one game at a time."
 
If history were to repeat itself, the Cowboys are about to embark on a winning trend. Over the last two years, McNeese has won 7 out of 10 games combined in the final five games of the season.
 
But to do so, McNeese will have to tame a talented Wildcat team who has home wins over four of the top five teams in the league. But ACU is just 2-10 away from home on the season and 0-6 in road conference games.
 
"They're a good ball club," said Simmons. "They had the league's freshman of the year last year (Jaylen Franklin) who ended up scoring 29 on us at their place last year. They also have a really good freshman post (Jalone Friday)."
 
Friday is averaging 14 points a game along with forward Jaren Lewis while Franklin is sinking 10.9 points.
 
The Wildcats will start three players standing 6-foot-6 or taller.
 
"They present problems in matchups," said Simmons. "They all can play on the perimeter too. They try to spread it out and the big guys can step out and knock down the shots."
 
McNeese guard Jarren Greenwood (9.2 ppg), who missed last Saturday's game with an injured hand, is expected to be back in the starting lineup. He's expected to be joined by James Harvey (8.8 ppg), Kalob Ledoux (10.3 ppg), Lance Potier (6.5 ppg, 6.1 rpg) and Stephen Ugochukwu (10.4 ppg, 7.9 rpg).
 
Thursday's game will be the seventh meeting in the all-time series with McNeese holding a 5-1 advantage, including a 5-0 mark at home.