Butler Game Thread II

[JacobPadilla]

Here's my gamer from the win.

https://hurrdatsports.com/creighton-men ... alf-blitz/

This game was another shining example of why Creighton plays the style of defense it does.

The Jays locked down on Butler's top three scorers all game. That created some openings for other guys early on, but it wasn't ever sustainable offense, especially with a few tweaks to disrupt their rhythm in the second half. That first Butler game is a serious outlier that was worth studying to make sure it didn't happen again, but not something worth overreacting to.

[slaw]

Here's my gamer from the win.

https://hurrdatsports.com/creighton-men ... alf-blitz/

This game was another shining example of why Creighton plays the style of defense it does.

The Jays locked down on Butler's top three scorers all game. That created some openings for other guys early on, but it wasn't ever sustainable offense, especially with a few tweaks to disrupt their rhythm in the second half. That first Butler game is a serious outlier that was worth studying to make sure it didn't happen again, but not something worth overreacting to.

fyi - Butler coach Thad Matta spoke highly of Scheierman after the game, echoing what Providence coach Ed Cooley had to say after Scheierman’s triple-double on Tuesday.

[drbluejay]

Baylor's acrobatic layups earn him my standout player of the game. Trey Kalk, and Ashworth also had games that stood out.
If we could just get more out of our PF, we could again be talking final 4 possibilities.
One guard short of taking some of Bello's minutes also hurt our chances of a deep run.
You can never have too many guards, but it's easy to have too many bigs sitting on the bench like we have now.

[WBR Tom]

WBR’s postgame recap breaks down the win with highlights, stats, quotes and analysis:

https://whiteandbluereview.com/postgame ... ler-79-57/

[Chicagojayfan]

Best half of basketball we've had this year, IMO, and it came at one of the most important times in the season.

For a while I've preached that this team is a work in progress and that we don't know exactly how good they can get - well, yesterday started to show us that. Similarly, Jacob's preached (I'm paraphrasing here) that while sometimes teams have great games against the odds, that doesn't mean our defensive system is broken, and to add to that - the regression back to the norm for Butler was a hard fall in the second half yesterday:

Rebounding/Turnovers - When we've lost, more often than not it was one of these or both of these that beat us, and when you go on the road you can't give teams extra chances.. Well, yesterday was one of our best games in those regards: Top 10 of the season in Total Rebounding %, and 5th best of the season in Turnover% (as a bonus we also turned them over the most of any opponent this year

Top level numbers here - we gave up 5 pts off turnovers, and 0 2nd chance points yesterday (those are crazy good numbers)

Defense - We went from having our worst defensive game of the year against them at home to our best defensive game of the year versus a BE Conference team (well, excluding DePaul.. but still!). And that doesn't even highlight how good we were in the 2nd half. First half they scored at over a 1 PPP rate, 2nd half.. .629 PPP. Extended out, that half of D would easily be the best half of the year for us defensively

While I think a good part of it was just that Butler shot closer to their norm than last time, the coaching adjustment to put more pressure on their screening was a brilliant move as it shook up their half court offense and even led to a lot of turnovers, but individually we had a lot of good performances, holding their biggest scorers in check most of the game - Telfort got 4 (crazy good performance), Davis 5/13, Brooks 1/6, Posh 6/11, but 1/6 in the second half. Yes, Thomas scored and hit some shots, but D is a team activity not solo, and Butler was only 8/16 at the rim, 10/22 mid range, while allowing the rest of the team to lock them up from 3 PT range for 6/22

Offense: A Tale of two halves. We weren't particularly bad in the first half, but the second half was a display of great basketball. Extended out that half of offense would have almost certainly been the best offensive game of this year for us (or at least the best against a P5 competitor

As is, the game ranks 16th for this year's games for Offensive Rating on the BBall reference advanced game log for us and about the same in Total Shooting %, right around what we shot versus DePaul and Iowa and this last Xavier game. My view is that is an indication of just how good this team is offensively ---- IF this team can play D to get enough stops and limit opponent opportunities by limiting turnovers and offensive boards, yesterday's performance is what I think is well within the norm for this team, and that's a norm that should scare the heck out of a lot of other teams

Individual Stuff:
Baylor's just been awesome lately. He was 6/6 at the rim, 3/5 from 3 PT, 10 boards, and just another great performance
Trey had one of those sneaky quiet seeming games where he ends up stuffing the box score and having a really good game, 15 pts, 8 boards, 5 assists, 3 steals, and 0 turnovers. Only thing he didn't do was hit a 3
Kalk struggled to finish in the paint in the first half 3/7, but we got creative in finding him and his 3 PT shots made things really tough on their D (and us completely shutting down Butler defensively was in large part due to Kalk not only challenging shots, but using a lot of energy to blow up their screens)
Ashworth - He hasn't shot the ball great the past few games, but he keeps finding ways to impact the game with big shots at critical times, getting the ball up the court fast, or even scrapping out 2 PT shots when the 3 PT shots weren't falling yesterday. Add in the fact that he's become officially scrappy defensively, and he's been a big part of this team starting to reach their potential

Bello is the only bench guy to get any real minutes yesterday, and while Miller only got 20 minutes in the game, he was productive. I thought Bello was pretty not good in the first half, but his second half was at least better and it's hard to argue with how well the team did in the half. I still feel like Bello's value is best at under 20 mpg, but we need Traudt and Green to step up and give us enough to get some additional rotation

With how the games are likely to be down the stretch, I'm not anticipating a lot of chances for the bench, though

Looking ahead:
Doesn't get any easier with the schedule coming up, but yesterday's game should give us good confidence going into a meeting with probably the best team in the country at him (UConn) and a pretty tough stretch of @SJU, SH, Marquette, and @Nova to end the season. Even winning 3 of those going into the BE Tourney would be a nice finish, anything more would be a great finish

[SDJay]

Best half of basketball we've had this year, IMO, and it came at one of the most important times in the season.

For a while I've preached that this team is a work in progress and that we don't know exactly how good they can get - well, yesterday started to show us that. Similarly, Jacob's preached (I'm paraphrasing here) that while sometimes teams have great games against the odds, that doesn't mean our defensive system is broken, and to add to that - the regression back to the norm for Butler was a hard fall in the second half yesterday:

Rebounding/Turnovers - When we've lost, more often than not it was one of these or both of these that beat us, and when you go on the road you can't give teams extra chances.. Well, yesterday was one of our best games in those regards: Top 10 of the season in Total Rebounding %, and 5th best of the season in Turnover% (as a bonus we also turned them over the most of any opponent this year

Top level numbers here - we gave up 5 pts off turnovers, and 0 2nd chance points yesterday (those are crazy good numbers)

Defense - We went from having our worst defensive game of the year against them at home to our best defensive game of the year versus a BE Conference team (well, excluding DePaul.. but still!). And that doesn't even highlight how good we were in the 2nd half. First half they scored at over a 1 PPP rate, 2nd half.. .629 PPP. Extended out, that half of D would easily be the best half of the year for us defensively

While I think a good part of it was just that Butler shot closer to their norm than last time, the coaching adjustment to put more pressure on their screening was a brilliant move as it shook up their half court offense and even led to a lot of turnovers, but individually we had a lot of good performances, holding their biggest scorers in check most of the game - Telfort got 4 (crazy good performance), Davis 5/13, Brooks 1/6, Posh 6/11, but 1/6 in the second half. Yes, Thomas scored and hit some shots, but D is a team activity not solo, and Butler was only 8/16 at the rim, 10/22 mid range, while allowing the rest of the team to lock them up from 3 PT range for 6/22

Offense: A Tale of two halves. We weren't particularly bad in the first half, but the second half was a display of great basketball. Extended out that half of offense would have almost certainly been the best offensive game of this year for us (or at least the best against a P5 competitor

As is, the game ranks 16th for this year's games for Offensive Rating on the BBall reference advanced game log for us and about the same in Total Shooting %, right around what we shot versus DePaul and Iowa and this last Xavier game. My view is that is an indication of just how good this team is offensively ---- IF this team can play D to get enough stops and limit opponent opportunities by limiting turnovers and offensive boards, yesterday's performance is what I think is well within the norm for this team, and that's a norm that should scare the heck out of a lot of other teams

Individual Stuff:
Baylor's just been awesome lately. He was 6/6 at the rim, 3/5 from 3 PT, 10 boards, and just another great performance
Trey had one of those sneaky quiet seeming games where he ends up stuffing the box score and having a really good game, 15 pts, 8 boards, 5 assists, 3 steals, and 0 turnovers. Only thing he didn't do was hit a 3
Kalk struggled to finish in the paint in the first half 3/7, but we got creative in finding him and his 3 PT shots made things really tough on their D (and us completely shutting down Butler defensively was in large part due to Kalk not only challenging shots, but using a lot of energy to blow up their screens)
Ashworth - He hasn't shot the ball great the past few games, but he keeps finding ways to impact the game with big shots at critical times, getting the ball up the court fast, or even scrapping out 2 PT shots when the 3 PT shots weren't falling yesterday. Add in the fact that he's become officially scrappy defensively, and he's been a big part of this team starting to reach their potential

Bello is the only bench guy to get any real minutes yesterday, and while Miller only got 20 minutes in the game, he was productive. I thought Bello was pretty not good in the first half, but his second half was at least better and it's hard to argue with how well the team did in the half. I still feel like Bello's value is best at under 20 mpg, but we need Traudt and Green to step up and give us enough to get some additional rotation

With how the games are likely to be down the stretch, I'm not anticipating a lot of chances for the bench, though

Looking ahead:
Doesn't get any easier with the schedule coming up, but yesterday's game should give us good confidence going into a meeting with probably the best team in the country at him (UConn) and a pretty tough stretch of @SJU, SH, Marquette, and @Nova to end the season. Even winning 3 of those going into the BE Tourney would be a nice finish, anything more would be a great finish

Great post/analysis, as usual!
That second half was a lot of fun to watch as a Jays fan. Hope the momentum flows into Tuesday!

[SeattleJay]

Agree, great post, ChicagoJay.

One minor quibble: we need Green more for getting and preventing O rebounds rather than just minutes.

We settled in with Bello in the second half as Butler did not play a big lineup, so Bello and Ashworth together was not problematic. However, against U Conn, they are bigger at every position but one. They dominated us (and MU yesterday) on O rebounds. We need to be good on the glass to beat U Conn.

Also, to have a shot on day 2 or 3 of the BET we need minutes.

[JacobPadilla]

Here's my gamer from the win.

https://hurrdatsports.com/creighton-men ... alf-blitz/

This game was another shining example of why Creighton plays the style of defense it does.

The Jays locked down on Butler's top three scorers all game. That created some openings for other guys early on, but it wasn't ever sustainable offense, especially with a few tweaks to disrupt their rhythm in the second half. That first Butler game is a serious outlier that was worth studying to make sure it didn't happen again, but not something worth overreacting to.

fyi - Butler coach Thad Matta spoke highly of Scheierman after the game, echoing what Providence coach Ed Cooley had to say after Scheierman’s triple-double on Tuesday.

Whoops. Still feels weird. Thanks.

[Altmanforprez]

Agree, great post, ChicagoJay.

One minor quibble: we need Green more for getting and preventing O rebounds rather than just minutes.

We settled in with Bello in the second half as Butler did not play a big lineup, so Bello and Ashworth together was not problematic. However, against U Conn, they are bigger at every position but one. They dominated us (and MU yesterday) on O rebounds. We need to be good on the glass to beat U Conn.

Also, to have a shot on day 2 or 3 of the BET we need minutes.

Yeah on the postgame show Mac mentioned the reason Green didn’t play was solely due to Butler going small. Said he needs to be ready to on Tuesday

[gtmoBlue]

Wow…. Great post ChicagoJay.

In a different thread I lamented JD not getting minutes. Several argued if he doesn’t grade out in practices, why should he see the court?

Well. While good points for the past/current rotation purposes, I am thinking ahead - for BET & the dance. While Bello is experienced and a seasoned senior, he’s getting bucoup minutes with little production. Bello should not be getting 20+ mpg under any circumstances.
Would be nice to knock the rust off Dotzler, Green, Chandler, and Knox (potentially for BET & the Dance.

Butler late second half??? Time to sub?