With six games remaining, the Cowboys are still looking to improve their performance as they prepare for the postseason.

McNeese (19-6, 13-1) became the first team to clinch a spot in the Southland Conference tournament with its win last Monday over East Texas A&M. Now, the team is set on winning the regular season title for the second straight year, which it last did in 2002. 

They enter this weekend’s play with a three-game lead over Lamar and Southeastern, making their magic number four.

“We got six games left,” said McNeese head coach Will Wade. “We know we need to win at lead four of them. Hopefully, we win all of them, but we need four first  to lock into the one seed.”

Over the last two years, McNeese has been 49-10, closing in on its best two-season record since moving up to Division I. The Cowboys won 54 games during the 1956 and 1957 campaigns to set the record.

They would also like to win back-to-back SLC Tournament titles for the first time in program history, which would mean a second consecutive trip to the NCAA Regional.

To get there, though, the Cowboys have some things they need to fix. 

“We need to play better, we need to play with more urgency, we need to play with more consistency,” said Wade. “We need to play for a full 40 minutes. Hopefully, we’ll see some signs of life this weekend.”

McNeese is in New Orleans on Saturday before going to Hammond for a showdown against Southeastern on Monday night.

After never trailing in the second half of the first nine league games this season, the Cowboys have struggled during the second round of competition. They even trailed by 11 to ETAM, the last-place club, before turning things around.

“We needed to get punched in the mouth,” said guard DJ Richards. “We responded in the right way. Now we got to keep it going.”

Richards believes the team is coming out of a February funk.

“It’s that part of the year where we maybe take things for granted,” Richards said. “We have to get over that. If we go out and there and play like we can, nobody can beat us.”

His coach knows it’s about the Cowboys more than anything else.

“It doesn’t matter what we do, it matters how we do it,” said Wade.

The Cowboys need to finish, whether at the rim during games or with a flourish down the stretch. They need to find their killer instinct.

“We just have to worry about ourselves,” said Wade. “We want to play tough, play through contact, and stay aggressive. We have to control what we can control.”

Right now, the Cowboys control their future with four more wins.