By LEW
FREEDMAN
INDIANAPOLIS
– Shortly after the final buzzer sounded to lock down Butler’s 63-57 Horizon
League victory over Loyola on Tuesday night, Bulldogs coach Brad Stevens
uttered a simple statement. "It’s hard to win a basketball game,” he said.
His
Bulldogs have spent the entire winter proving it. It’s a lot harder to come by
wins this season than it was the last two seasons for Butler, everyone’s
darlings in the NCAA tournament in 2010 and 2011 when the Bulldogs advanced to
the championship game.
Most of the
players from those two teams have moved on and the squad Stevens is coaching
this year is stuffed with freshmen and sophomores who weren’t here or rarely
got off the bench last season.
It was a
disappointment to many when the Bulldogs fell to Connecticut in last year’s
title game, shooting a record-worst 18.8 percent from the field. Rather than
prove an aberration, however, that festival of clanking turned out to be
foreshadowing. Writer Jimmy Breslin penned a book many years ago called The
Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. It was about mobsters, not basketball players, but that’s
where Butler is today.
The word
"swish” might as well be a foreign language tongue twister for Butler.
"Nothing, but net” is a phrase not often heard at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Coming
into Tuesday’s game against Loyola, the Bulldogs were hitting a cringe-worthy
27.7 percent of their attempts from 3-point territory. Their foul shooting was
.634 – an entire team of Shaquille O’Neals. Their overall field goal percentage
was .400.
Basketball
is like all of those other sports you hear about, from baseball to football to
hockey. If you don’t score, you can’t win. Yet somehow, almost miraculously,
with shooting numbers that might make an elementary school player blush, after
the Loyola triumph Butler was sitting at 16-12, winners of 10 games in league
play for a record seventh straight year.
With three
regular-season games to go, the hardly dominant Bulldogs can still aspire to
win the league title, and if they get hot at the right time, actually capture
the conference tournament and qualify for NCAA play again.
This is
unequivocally a rebuilding season for the Bulldogs. Guard Shelvin Mack had one
year of eligibility remaining, but he opted to commit to the NBA draft and he
was chosen by the Washington Wizards (a team some think is only marginally
better than Butler). Mack was the designated sniper-scorer, so his loss was
huge. Given their difficulties scoring points, and their trend of being
entangled in close games, it is not outrageous to suggest that Mack would have
been worth maybe three more wins.
Another
team under another coach might not even be in this position. However, except
for a few teams on the schedule that were just flat-out too strong, the
Bulldogs have been in every game because they still play the meanest,
junkyard-dog defense out there, the make-you-look-bad defense that enabled them
to fight to the title game two years running.
Butler
actually shot 52.5 percent from the field Tuesday, the second time all season
the Bulldogs made more than half their shots in a game, as opposed to the 13
times they have shot under 40 percent. They show the occasional flash of a hot
streak on offense, but they dig down on defense all of the time. Defense is
definitely the signature of this Butler club.
"It’s gotta
be with this group,” Stevens said.
Loyola
(6-19, 1-14 league) never led. There were ties at 2-2, 4-4 and 44-44. The last
one was of the greatest concern to Butler. The Bulldogs led by as many as 13
points in the first half, but at the beginning of the second half went on one
of their offensive walkabouts, not scoring a field goal for six minutes and
scoring just two buckets in 12 ½ minutes.
Yet the
Bulldogs never surrendered the lead and survived. Khyle Marshall, a 6-foot-6 sophomore
forward, came up with the remedy to the basket drought. He scored 12 points on
5-for-6 shooting. None of his hoops, an assortment of attention-getting dunks
and a few lay-ups, came from more than six inches from the rim.
"He brings
length and athleticism to them,” said Ramblers coach Porter Moser.
Senior
point guard Ronald Nored and Marshall seem to have telepathic communication.
Nored finds Marshall with alley-oop passes even when he is barely visible
behind a wall of players.
"He makes
it easy,” Nored said. "He’s ridiculously athletic. If you get it anywhere close
to the rim, he’s going to dunk.”
Butler had
every chance to give this game away. But Butler doesn’t panic if a lead
evaporates, Moser said. The Bulldogs play the same way all game.
"They don’t
change their demeanor,” Moser said. "They realize you can win a game many
different ways. They don’t let you get over the hump.”
Moser
talked about his own team’s struggles and its challenge to keep playing hard
when the season has been a lost one. However, his actual words can easily be
applied to Butler and how the Bulldogs react in tough situations.
"Character
is how you respond when things don’t go your way,” Moser said. "You keep
fighting. You keep grinding.”
The
Bulldogs are world champion grinders. The only regular still in the lineup from
two years ago when Butler lost to Duke in the NCAA championship game is Nored,
who has 138 assists (after collecting nine against Loyola), a somewhat amazing
number considering the erratic nature of the team’s scoring habits. Center
Andrew Smith is the only other starter back from last season. Other than that,
Stevens has been mixing and matching all season. Freshmen Roosevelt Jones and
Kameron Woods have played large roles, as has sophomore guard Chrishawn Hopkins.
The 6-1
Hopkins was a major-league gunner at Indianapolis Manuel. He was the designated
heir to Mack. When Mack split a year early, Hopkins was supposed to become the
go-to perimeter shooter. While Hopkins had a 22-point game early, he was not
really ready for the responsibility. He committed too many turnovers and then
slipped into a shooting slump. At times, he seemed bewildered on the court.
"He was put
in an unfair position,” Stevens said. "That was to go from a guy who hadn’t
played to a guy that was being counted on.”
Lately,
Hopkins has been showing some of the talent that led Butler to recruit him. He
scored 13 points versus Loyola, shot four-for-eight, and most importantly
nailed a clutch jumper with five seconds remaining on the shot clock when it
was a two-point game with 2:19 to go.
"I hit one
earlier and I knew my shooting form was good,” Hopkins said. "It felt good when
it went in.”
It felt
very good for Butler because that type of shooting play is something that has
been missing. Sophomore Erik Fromm, who rarely got minutes last year, has
started the last four games in a row. Fromm is 6-8 and weighs 220, but he has
an outside shot. Tuesday he scored 10 points on 4-for-6 shooting and made two
3-point jumpers.
"He just
spreads the floor for us,” Stevens said.
A year ago,
in mid-February, the Bulldogs were 14-9 and very much of a long-shot to win the
Horizon League, never mind reach the NCAAs. They won 14 games in a row. Now
they are 16-12. In 2012, a season with no dominating league team, the Bulldogs
could catch fire and win the Horizon League tournament, ensuring a spot in NCAA
play.
"We can
finish the season out the way we want to,” Nored said.
Stranger
things have happened with Butler. Otherwise, there would not be two NCAA
Finalist banners hanging from the rafters at Hinkle.