Butler Game Thread

[go_jays]

Zone Schmone... When the other team is making shots from 25 feet out... and Telefort is killing you from 15 on in.....It doesn't effing matter. You could be playing with 6 against their 5 (or 8 since they didn't call a single moving screen against Butler, yet they managed to call Kalk for 2... 1 legit and the other BS) and still struggle.

Any team that shoots 60% from 3 AND from the range they were taking them from is on some kinda drug or something.... That's like shooting 90% in 2 pointers.

[jays34]

They were on fire at an epic level. It happens. And we still coulda shoulda won in the last 10 seconds. I'm not worried.

[go_jays]

They were on fire at an epic level. It happens. And we still coulda shoulda won in the last 10 seconds. I'm not worried.

Absolutely... how many shots did we have at the end... 3? And if Bello pulls the ball out of that scrum instead of trying to bull his way through it... Plus, I think there was a foul on Butler against Trey when he lost that one towards the end out of bounds.

[Angry Dan]

Matta

Damn, the guy took two different Ohio State teams to the Final Four, (07 and 12). He coached Xavier to the Elite 8 and should have made the Final Four but they had to play Duke who got all the calls.

If Matta had stayed physically healthy he would still be at Ohio State and eclipsing Tom Izzo. He won a ton of Big 10 championships and tourneys. He is one of the all time greats and now he is leading Butler, not in the Horizon League, but in the Big East. The ceiling is sky high at Butler.

Got a little taste of that last night kids. Pay attention and look out.

[#RollJays]

Butler’s bench going 5-6 from 3 was massive. Posh being out allowed Butler to have 4-5 shooters on the court at all times.

In any event, that loss was one that stays with fans for awhile. That one hurt.

[vivid_dude]

I cannot speak for all fans, but I’ll speak for me. That loss won’t stay with me. It was the least concerning loss of the year, in my book. Every other loss, I can point to weaknesses or disappointments far more concerning than this one. It was an aberration. Butler went nuts. Colorado State last season comes to mind, but even they were not yesterday’s Butler.

[JacobPadilla]

Mac is Mr Moneyball. All about the analytics. To the grave.

100% this. He has a system. He believes in the system. The system generally is very successful. But the system is imperfect. He will not deviate in response to some aberrational performance. He was probably thinking what I was throughout the game - Butler can’t keep this up and the Jays will pull it out. Reasonable thing to believe. Butler didn’t cooperate.

We've seen it play out exactly like that multiple times this season where teams come out shooting at a high enough clip to stay with Creighton early but can't sustain it for 40 minutes.

What's more likely to have success, sticking with something you've spent the most time practicing and perfecting with the belief that eventually it will work out or switching to something you're not as good at and just hoping you get lucky? Coaches are typically going to trust in the work their team has put in over trying things just for the sake of doing something different.

For those that think Mac was just sitting on his hands and not making any adjustments, here's what he had to say about trying to scheme in a game with such high-level shot-making:

"We changed some ball screen coverages at times and we were moving our matchups all over the place to try to slow down their their roll. Thought about zone a few times, but with the level of shot-making we just didn't we just didn't feel like — we would rather have them take some tough 2s than be able to shoot those 3s. As crazy as it sounds, I thought not having posh Alexander totally changed our defensive plan because Posh doesn't shoot a bunch of 3s. While he impacts the game in a lot of ways, and obviously they'd have been better defensively with him on the floor, the guys that they put out there in his place made shots. Bizjack's made, I think, two 3s in conference play; he made three tonight. I think Kapke's made two all year, maybe three all year; he made two tonight. So they had some guys really step up and make shots."

I haven't had time to re-watch to evaluate the defense yet (which Mac and the both players both talked about needing to do as well to properly judge how much of Butler's 99 was their defensive mistakes and how much was Butler's shot-making). Here's what I wrote prior to the re-watch for now, at least.

https://hurrdatsports.com/creighton-men ... -shootout/

[go_jays]

Bottom line... that was a once in a life-time, life altering, out of body experience for them. They'll probably never see that again. Hopefully we don't either!

Shit happens...

[Outlaw_Wales]

Watching in real time in person it felt like a ton of really late or no closeouts, late closeouts without even a hand up on threes, then getting in the lane without Kalk stepping up and getting the shot off quick, driving straight at Kalk for layups, etc.

There were definitely some tough makes — but mostly felt like we let them get really comfortable with pretty weak or poor resistance, which makes some of those tough ones easier.

[Jaybird]

That Finnicky Beanbag dude looked and sounded like a freshman out of Hogwarts, but he shot like a sawed-off Pistol Pete. Here's hoping for a full recovery for Posh over the next two weeks, so this kid will be buried at the end of the bench again. We’d be better off taking our chances with him than Freeway Carjack or whatever his oddball name is.