Horizon League Semifinals and John Parry
by Bill Kintner
MILWAUKEE – Before the first Horizon League Semifinals between number two seed Butler Bulldogs and the number three seed University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Phoenix, I sat down with Butler Athletic Director John Parry.
He talks about the Bulldogs, the Horizon League and the Horizon League Championship format.
Bill Kintner: What were your expectations when you came up here to Milwaukee?
John Parry: Anybody could win, when it is all said and done. Butler is hoping for the combination of wins and losses that make it so that we are hosting the finals on Tuesday in Indianapolis. I think when you look at the six teams here, any one of then could have come through the bracket and won it. Clearly Milwaukee has the edge. They are at home and have seven seniors, but hey, anything can happen.
BK: What were your expectations coming into this year, after losing a couple of guys during the off-season?
JP: On the good side, we had five returning starters, and they all worked very hard during the summer. Brandon Polk had major surgery on his shoulder. He spent a year shooting with his off-hand, so when he started play this year he was much more of a threat. He is much more multi-dimensional. The issue for us at the beginning of the year was players that could come off the bench and contribute. The two main guys were both coming off major knew surgery, Julian Betko and Brian Ligon, so we knew we were just an injury from being a not very good team. But this team got through it, pulled together and has been able to compete.
BK: Butler has had some major success over the last 20 years. Why is that?
JP: Good question! I think the university around 1990, when they hired Barry Collier, made a significant commitment to basketball that wasn’t there in the past. They put about $1.5 million into Hinkle Fieldhouse to really dress up the lower level, created the Dawg Pound for the students, created suites of offices and locker rooms. In addition we went to full scholarships or a full complement that the NCAA allows and a full complement of coaches. More money was also put into the recruiting budget. It took some time, no question about it. Barry Collier went through a transition of wanting to be a run and gun coach, to valuing the ball and defense. He got that from Dick Bennett and really turned it around and began to win in about 1996-97.
BK: You have hired two coaches, right?
JP: The year Barry left was 2000 and that was the year we lost to Florida in OT. I remember during the half time of that game the athletic director of Wake Forest said, “Gee, you have a nice team. Are they all seniors?” We had two seniors, two juniors, two sophomores, two freshman and two transfers sitting out. It was the perfect set of twos. He was shocked to learn we only had two seniors. So the next year we had all but two guys back. That carried us all the way through to the year 2003. But all of a sudden between red shirts and transfers we had seven seniors, which is kind of a bazaar combination. But in that time period we replaced a coach twice, but kept the system because the players are in place to win. It is easier to change coaches when you are 5-22 or if you just graduated a whole class. But kids, who are used to playing value the ball, distribute the ball, make the three-type ball, it is hard to change. Bruce Pearl was interested in this coaching position. I told him on the phone, “Bruce if I were 5-22, you would be high on my list because kids want to play the way you play, but we have a group of kids that have been winning 52-51 and I wouldn’t be showing any respect for them if I trashed everything they did by changing the style of ball they played.” We had Thad Matta, who I was convinced could recruit, but I wasn’t so sure about his coaching. It turns out he could do both. The Xs and Os expert on that staff was Todd Lickliter. So the question I had was would he be able to recruit? I think he has shown that he can.
BK: What is the criteria you use in evaluating a coach?
JP: There has to be a good fit with the institution. He has to understand the values and be able to accept the fact that at Butler we value small classes, that our players will go to class, you are not a number, you are a name. The admission process is not one that everyone has. We don’t always hear the answer we want on getting student-athletes in. They are willing to screen early so we don’t spend a lot of time on non-qualifying candidates. So you have to believe in the education, believe in the philosophy and the student athlete that Butler has. Beyond that it is all about character, it is all about leadership and you will find that Xs and Os are kind of far down the list. If you have all of those, you will find if the whole team is committed to that, then almost any system will work.
BK: You have had a lot of success with all your teams that compete in the Horizon league. Is that because of the philosophy you just outlined?
JP: The wonderful thing that happened in the mid-nineties is that every sport got an automatic bid. Before that it was only basketball, but the rest of the sports’ brackets have expanded now. Now whichever school wins the conference in baseball, soccer, volleyball, they are in the NCAA Tournament. That has been a wonderful thing in the terms of access to championships. So all of a sudden it looks like Butler has all these teams in the NCAA Tournament. They may have been as good in the early nineties but they couldn’t get in. You had to be at-large and there were limited at-large bids. That has been very helpful and it was paid for by the expanded CBS contract. Those brackets don’t bring any money in. We have 21 sports, but we don’t give athletic scholarships in seven of them – men’s and women’s indoor track, men’s and women’s outdoor track, men’s and women’s swimming and football. So those seven sports are running more like Division III sports.
BK: The Horizon League has been a very stable conference.
JP: Probably the most dramatic change in the last five years was the restructuring of the basketball tournament. Green Bay dinged Butler in the conference tournament – an eight seed beating a one seed. So that seemed to be hard to accept that we would put a team at risk like that. The championship ended up being Loyola and UIC played in Cleveland. A lot of the fans from Chicago were excited about the game until they found out it was in Cleveland.
BK: On a weeknight, too!
JP: Yes, so we made a couple of decisions. The best thing for this conference is to get multiple teams in the tournament. How can we do that? Let’s protect our top team. Ironically since then it has not been Butler, but that’s okay. The key philosophy was that all nine teams make it. That you don’t leave anyone out and you protect your top teams. The regular season now means a lot. I think it is a very creative solution. Even if you have 10 teams, then the three seed wouldn’t get a bye, I believe. I think my colleagues would agree. That way the championship always ends up at a home site, which you play for it all year and it assures you will always have a home crowd, which looks pretty good on ESPN. That was a fairly dramatic coming together with a lot of issues that started with looking at if we should leave the ninth team at home. We met with all the coaches in one room and they were like, “You can’t do that to me. What if I am the ninth team?” We got a spirit of cooperation that was fairly creative. I think you can credit Jon LeCrone with coming up with that plan. I don’t know where he got it from, but it is a heck of a plan.
BK: Did you have to drag any schools kicking and screaming or were you all on the same page?
JP: We were all on the same page. The only issue is last year John Planek (Loyola AD) said, “You know playing that Friday game in Milwaukee last year, there was nobody at the game. So is there anyway were could play at a home site on Friday?” That would push the semifinals to Sunday. There is a lot of cooperation and no animosity. To answer the larger part of your question, there was a time when people worried about a public/private divide. There is no doubt that we have different challenges in terms of how we get funding. Milwaukee may use tuition waivers and we are using funny money inside. But what has brought that all under control is the NCAA by limiting the number of scholarships and putting in some clear academic criteria, it has sort of leveled those issues. You can still only have 13 basketball scholarships. They can cost $34,000 or $15,000, but you only get 13 scholarships in the sport of basketball.
BK: What has led to the stability of the Horizon League?
JP: The positive Pollyanna answer is to say we are all on the same page and everything is wonderful. The more cynical answer is that most of the movement in the country in the last 15 years has been driven by football and we’re not a player collectively. The last school we lost was Northern Illinois and that was a football decision. They got bounced out of a league that they had and they needed to get into the MAC. It had nothing to do with us. The fact that we don’t have a 1-A football program where someone is either desirable or trying to solve a football problem helps us. That is the cynical side. People occasionally approach me at Butler and say, “We really ought to look at the Missouri Valley.” And I say, “It is a wonderful athletic league for basketball. But do you realize what towns we will be playing in? What the travel would look like?” We are in the right cities for Butler. For our alumni and our recruiting we like to be in Chicago, Dayton, Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee. The only city missing, I think, is St. Louis. We like as an institution to be in the major cities. Strictly basketball, could there be an upside to being in the MVC? I don’t know. Clearly the league is stronger. But we don’t fit the profile of Bradley in Peoria or Wichita State in Wichita. We are sitting in a metropolitan city. The league as an institution is about a lot more than where we play basketball. To our basketball fans it is a basketball decision. To our admissions and alumni office it is more of where they want to be. I can tell you that group wants to be in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and Dayton. There isn’t a drive from any other part of the institution to get into another league.
BK: I know former President Bush spoke at Butler the other night in historic Hinkle Fieldhouse.
JP: That would be six presidents. Five Republicans and one Democrat have spoken at Hinkle.
BK: Sounds about right. You are sitting on a national treasure. What have you done to preserve the integrity of the structure, as you have tried to modernize it?
JP: If I had a lot of money, I want to do more with the restrooms.
BK: Well don’t replace the troughs!
JP: Well we would have to keep some.
BK: Good!
JP: We just don’t have enough of them. On each side of the upper levels there are about 1,500 seats in those two areas. Frankly they are rarely filled, but I like it when they are. I tried to think about what I could do up there. Maybe put a glass-enclosed lounge and it would be a study area when there is no basketball. It would be an entertainment area, like a club suite or party room that looked out onto the court. There would be nice seats right in front of it. I can tell you that when we put in the new scoreboards on the ends within thirty minutes people were saying we were destroying Hinkle Fieldhouse. You have whipped cream on your nose.
BK: Oh thanks! Is it off now? (whip cream from a cappuccino)
JP: Yeah, you got it. Yet after people got used to them they asked, “Why haven’t we had them all along?”
BK: Can you get chair-back installed where the Big Chill up in the Crow’s Nest?
JP: With some of the money we got from all of our NCAA success – which is not near as much as people think – we did put cushions on some of the bleachers. I think it was six rows along the side of the court and three rows all the way around. It was about 2,000 seats and we could sell them as reserve seats if we chose to.
BK: Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time to speak with me.
JP: You are welcome.
Butler 73, UW-Green Bay 51
Butler’s Coach Todd Lickliter wasn’t sure how his team would respond to the week they had off. So he decided to get away, come up a day early and stay on the Lake Michigan in Kenosha, WI. They practiced at UW-Lakeside and then drove up to Milwaukee on Friday.
Lickliter proved to be quite the travel planner as his Bulldogs pounded the UW-Green Bay Phoenix into submission 73-51 in the semifinal game on Saturday.
“You never know what a week will do, but I thought we needed it,” explained Lickliter. “I thought the freshness helped.”
Butler’s A. J. Graves scored a layup 27 seconds into the game that led to 12-2 run and Butler never looked back as they had the lead for the entire game.
By the time half time rolled around Butler (19-11) had built up a 21-point lead. They did it by breaking down the defense and shooting 59.3 percent, while holding the Phoenix to a poor 32.1 percent shooting percentage. From 3-point range Butler shot 50 percent (7-of-14). Graves was 3-of-4 and Avery Sheets was 2-of-3 from behind the arc.
In the second half things kept going Butler’s way, as the Bulldogs pushed the lead to their largest at 26 points on a 3-pointer by Graves to make it 51-25 with 16:41 left in the game.
The best the Phoenix could do was close the gap to 17 points at the 6:28 mark when Ryan Tillema made one of two foul shots.
Green Bay Coach Tod Kowalczyk thought when Butler got off to the quick start it hurt his team’s psyche and they just couldn’t bounce back. “They jumped out early and we had a hard time handling that,” explained Kowalczyk.
Butler was led in scoring by Sheets, who had 20 points on a 7-of-8 shooting performance. Graves tossed in 20 points and Brandon Polk scored 17 points.
For the game the Bull Dogs shot 50 percent (23-of-46) compared to 38.8 percent (19-of-49) for Green Bay (15-16).
Butler only turned the ball over seven times, while the Phoenix fumbled it 13 times, and that led to 22 points for Butler.
Green Bay was led in scoring by Aswan Ninatee with 16 points and Ryan Evanochko with 15 points.
Notes
- This is Butler’s eighth appearance in the league title game.
- The bulldogs defeated UWGB all three times this year and now lead the all-time series 21-13.
- Butler’s Bruce Horan extended his streak of consecutive games with a 3-point basket to 77, the second-best in NCAA history.
- Green Bay is now 11-11 in the Horizon League Tournament.
Wisconsin-Milwaukee 80, Loyola 66
After holding Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Boo Davis to just seven points the last time they played, Loyola probably thought they had his number. That is, until he came out and scored the Panthers’ first 10 points of the game. By the time the game ended, he scored 20 points en route to an 80-66 Panther victory to advance to the Championship game against Butler.
“I just tried to come out right away and set the tone. Last game they held me to like seven points, so I came out and tried to be aggressive,” said Davis.
At the 12:01 mark in the first half, Loyola’s Tom Levin hit a 3-pointer to give the Ramblers their last lead of the game at 17-15. From that point on, Wisconsin-Milwaukee (20-8) kept building their lead until it hit 13 points at 32-19 with 4:57 left in the half.
The Panthers got the lead up to 18 points on a layup by Davis with 3:33 left in the game and that was their biggest lead. The closest Loyola (19-11) would get was within 10 points when Blake Schilb sank two foul shots to make it 38-28.
Wisconsin-Milwaukee coach Rob Jeter was worried coming into the game about the weeklong layoff. “For us to come off the break that we did and play a tough opponent like Loyola that won five-straight, I thought the effort was there and we played a solid game,” explained Jeter.
For Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Joah Tucker also scored 20 points and pulled down eight rebounds. Adrian Tigert chipped in 17 points and Davis also grabbed 10 rebounds.
The Ramblers got 22 from Schilb, 17 points from J. R. Blount and 12 points from Majak Kou.
Notes
- Wisconsin-Milwaukee advanced to the championship game for the forth-straight year.
- The Panthers are now 8-8 all-time in league tournament games
- This win gives them 20 for the season. It is their forth-straight 20-win season.
- 7,502 fans who watched the game made it the 7th largest crowd in Wisconsin-Milwaukee history.
- Loyola is 23-26 all-time in league tournament games, and they trail Wisconsin-Milwaukee 20-14 in the all-time series.
