WALLA WALLA, Wash.  After Whitman, the only undefeated Division III men's basketball team in America, moved within one victory of a perfect regular season by beating Lewis and Clark 97-73 on Friday at Sherwood Center, sophomore Austin Butler assessed the moment.

"Our biggest enemy is ourselves, becoming complacent," he said. "We didn't have our best game. We need to get better. We have to play better defensively. We have to keep preparing for games to come. We have to keep improving."

'Get better.' 'Keep preparing.' 'Keep improving' -- from one of the nation's most prolific on-court thieves, following a wire-to-wire blowout in which the visiting team shot under 37 percent, where the 24-0 Northwest Conference regular-season champions fell three points shy of scoring 100 points for the sixth time in 12 home games.

Harsh? Nope.

Necessary.

"We want to win a national championship," Butler said.

The Blues wrap up the regular season against George Fox here at 6 p.m. Saturday, and will host a Northwest Conference tournament semifinal against the conference's fourth-place finisher on Thursday, at a time to be determined. If Whitman wins on Thursday, it would host the conference championship game on Saturday, Feb. 25, for the first time in program history.

The Blues could be home for a while. If Friday's performance, coming after a four-game road trip, is any indication, that's good news. Whitman junior Tim Howell scored 21 points in 19 minutes; he's on the verge of repeating as conference scoring champ. Joey Hewitt and Jaron Kirkley each scored 18 points on 7-for-9 shooting. Jase Harrison had 14 points. Butler grabbed 11 rebounds and three steals.

In the first half -- Whitman's third half of basketball at Sherwood in the last 35 days -- the Blues held their opponent to 25.9 percent field-goal shooting, made 14 of 18 shots inside the 3-point arc and committed just three turnovers.

"It was really nice to be back," Butler said.

"It's always nice to feed off the home crowd," added Hewitt. "On the road, we're used to being the villain. The crowd is almost like an extra player at times. It helped us on those 8-0 spurts."

Whitman head coach Eric Bridgeland noted that playing at home "has its pros and cons; sometimes you get too relaxed and lose some focus."

He detected traces of that phenomenon in the first 10 minutes. The traces vanished. Whitman went from up four points, eight minutes in, to up 26 (47-21) at halftime.

"We were able to regroup and close out the half on a great run," Bridgeland said.

Another gratifying development for Bridgeland was that a lot of players played a lot on Friday. Ten different Blues saw at least 10 minutes of run. Three of Whitman's five starters played fewer than 20 minutes while bench stalwarts like Hewitt (20 minutes), Kirkley (17), Cedric Jacobs-Jones (16) and Christian McDonald (13) played enough to stay in rhythm with a potentially deep postseason run looming.

"We were able to get a lot of guys time," said Bridgeland. "At this point, that's a big deal."

"We're a really deep team with a 'next up' mentality," Hewitt added. "We have a lot of guys that can come in and provide a spark. In close games, you need that. You need determined players that are out for blood."

Lewis & Clark, now out of the conference playoff race, heads to Spokane for its season finale carrying with it a 9-15 mark overall and a 6-9 record in the league.