Butler Returns to Prominence
NEW YORK – For a couple of years, Butler may have faded from the consciousness of the casual college basketball fan. If that was the case, it probably isn’t after Friday night.
The Bulldogs’ 79-71 win over Gonzaga – one of the breakthrough mid-majors in the late 1990s along with Butler around the same time – not only gave them the NIT Season Tip-Off title, but also national attention that says they’re back. Well, back in the minds of the casual fan, at least.
“We didn’t go anywhere,” Butler head coach Todd Lickliter said when asked if Butler is back on the national map. “It’s just a situation where, at our level, staying on top is pretty demanding.”
Under Barry Collier, an alum who became the school’s athletic director in August, Butler was a consistent winner in the 1990s and a team no one wanted to play in March. Starting with the 1996-97 season, the Bulldogs won at least 20 games for seven straight seasons (and they had 19 the year before that), making five NCAA Tournament appearances along the way. They went through three coaches in three years at one point and never missed a beat during that time, then won a school-record 27 games in Lickliter’s second season at the helm en route to a Sweet 16 appearance in 2003. They certainly managed to reload during all of those years, but that’s a very difficult thing to do at the mid-major level as teams can’t get elite talents that can make up for youth.
The next two seasons had no postseason play as Wisconsin-Milwaukee reigned supreme in the Horizon League, and Butler had younger teams. Most felt there was no shortage of talent despite the youth, and they weren’t an easy out, but they weren’t on the national radar like they had been. Even last year, few outside the Midwest probably knew that the Bulldogs quietly finished second in the Horizon League and lost in the championship game of the tournament to Wisconsin-Milwaukee, earning an NIT bid and winning a game there to finish with 20 wins.
Perhaps more proof that they weren’t seen quite the same way came when the coaches picked the Bulldogs sixth in the Horizon League preseason poll. They lost three key starters off last season’s team and have a small team, as four players stand 6’7″ and no one is taller. Expectations weren’t very high, in short, despite the fact that this team has four seniors and four juniors and experience like that is often a big key to a team’s success at this level.
But right from the get-go, this team has been on a roll, running its offense with great efficiency and shooting it well. They opened the season by hammering Tulane by 40, shooting over 53 percent from the field. They did it Friday against Gonzaga, moving the ball well and finding ways to get good looks at the basket. The numbers won’t back that up as they shot below 40 percent, but they got many good looks that didn’t quite go down. They were 23-26 from the foul line and iced the game with A.J. Graves (26 points en route to Most Outstanding Player honors) and Michael Green (16 points including 10-10 from the foul line) making all 14 of their free throw attempts in the final eight minutes.
Fans will describe it as a Princeton offense, especially since they tend to use almost all of the shot clock, but the Bulldogs do more penetration than you might typically see in such an offense. There were a number of occasions where one of them drove to the basket, drew all of the defenders and had a man open, and found the open man for a jumper that went in.
“We think there’s a right way to play the game, and we’re never going to take that for granted,” Lickliter said. “I think the right way is to defend as a team and to share the basketball and to play to one another’s strengths and to know one another and to understand that the game is played to be won by a team.”
The Bulldogs clearly have a grasp on the reality that this is just the beginning. They are happy about winning this prestigious event and the wins they have thus far, but there is plenty ahead. They couldn’t relax if they wanted to, as they had to hustle home to play Kent State on Saturday, a game they won in double overtime to improve to 7-0 behind another 26-point outing from Graves and a 31-39 showing at the foul line.
Chances are, the Bulldogs will be ranked in the polls, but that doesn’t matter to them and shouldn’t since the polls don’t factor into postseason play. They have more games ahead, including Ball State, a road game at Indiana State, as well as Purdue in the John Wooden Tradition before Horizon League play begins in earnest. And whether or not they are ranked in the polls, Butler should be on the radar, because this veteran team will be dangerous come the month of March with their discipline at both ends of the floor.
