Bulldogs' Rotation/Scoring Outlook for 2012-13

There has been a great deal of discussion about what Butler's rotation will look like and scoring predictions for individual players for this upcoming season on the forums, especially here.  Therefore, I am going to display the depth chart I created for this team a few months ago after the 2011-12 season had ended.

Pos.	Starter	Reserve	Not in Rotation	Walk-Ons
C	Andrew Smith	Erik Fromm		Emerson Kampen
PF	Khyle Marshall	Kameron Woods
SF	Roosevelt Jones	Kellen Dunham	Andrew Smeathers	Elliot Kampen
SG	Chrishawn  Hopkins	Chase Stigall	Devontae Morgan	Alex Barlow
PG	Rotnei Clarke	Jackson Aldridge	Chris Harrison-Docks

-        Now some might object to having Jackson Aldridge in the rotation, but keep in mind that he will be backing up Rotnei Clarke, and therefore will only be playing maybe 7-8 minutes per contest.

Here are my minute and point projections for 2012-13:

Pos.	Player	MPG	PPG
PG	Rotnei Clarke	32.2	16.0
PG	Jackson Aldridge	7.0	2.2
SG	Chrishawn Hopkins	25.4	10.1
SG	Chase Stigall	14.4	4.1
SF	Roosevelt Jones	26.7	7.4
SF	Kellen Dunham	12.6	5.3
PF	Khyle Marshall	24.6	10.8
PF	Kameron Woods	14.1	4.0
C	Andrew Smith	28.6	11.7
C	Erik Fromm	11.1	4.7

Each position does not add up to exactly 40 minutes to account for walk-ons/bench players to get a minute here and there in blowouts.  This adds up to 76 points per game as a team, which while unlikely, is more possible this year than in others because they will be playing a more up-pace tempo in the A-10, than in the Horizon League, where multiple teams (Wright State and Loyola come to mind) did not even average 60 points per game.  

For anyone who thinks Rotnei Clarke will score more points than this, remember that Brad Stevens has a team oriented offense where no one player does a bulk of the scoring.  In fact, the highest scorer at Butler during Brad Stevens’ tenure as head coach was Matt Howard as a senior, who averaged 16.4 ppg.  

With so many returning players, points and minutes will likely go down for some players (I predict Stigall, Woods, and Aldridge in particular), but the team should definitely be better as a whole, and points should not be as hard to come by.  It will be interesting to see how close/far off my predictions are come next March, and I look forward to the upcoming season.

Schedule Addition

Butler will be hosting University of New Orleans in a non-conference game on January 5th.  While UNO is technically a D-1 school, they have recently been a D-2 school, where former Wright State Raider Johann Mpondo played.  With the Atlantic 10 not allowing Non-D1 games on the schedule of Men's Basketball teams, this is the closest thing Butler can have to a cupcake game. 

http://www.unoprivateers.com/news/2012/6/23/MBB_0623125929.aspx (This is the link that confirms the UNO vs. Butler Game)

Butler's Non-Conference Opponents: Not so bad.

While it may appear that the Butler Bulldogs have a brutal non-conference schedule, but when digging deeper, they play a lot of teams who lost a lot from their 2011-12 squads.

Xavier: This team loses four starters including Tu Holloway, Kenny Frease, and Vanderbilt transfer Andre Walker.  Mark Lyons transferred to Arizona, leaving upcoming Sophomore Dezmine Wells as the only returning starter leading a very inexperienced team.  Butler should take advantage of Xavier's youth across the board to take the early non-conference game against Xavier.

Northwestern: For 2012-13, Northwestern's frontcourt will come in to this season with a combined zero minutes played as a Wildcat.  This includes Louisville transfer Jared Swopshire, TCU transfer Nikola Cerina, redshirt Freshman Mike Turner, and true Freshman Alex Olah, among a couple other Freshmen.  This froncourt will not only have to replace sharpshooter John Shurna's 20.0 ppg average, but also serviceable big men Luka Mirkovic and Davide Curletti. They may have a great backcourt led by Drew Crawford, but so does Butler.  Northwestern's frontcourt will have to step for the Wildcats to have a sniff at the NCAA tournament and a chance to beat Butler.

Vanderbilt: This team will be in a complete rebuilding mode.  They lost their top six scorers from 2011-12 season, including Junior sharp-shooter John Jenkins who left for the NBA Draft.  They also lost starters Jeffrey Taylor, Festus Ezeli, Brad Tinsley, and Lance Goulbourne to graduation, as well as 6th man Steve Tchiengang.  With only 3 of their 9 rotation players returning, none who were top-6 scorers on the team, look for Butler to be considered the favorite when making the trip to Memorial Gym in Nashville.

Butler Bulldogs News: June 10-17

This blog encompasses all news I missed from June 10 through 17 while on vacation.

1. Chier Ajou, a 7-2 Sudanese center, will be going to Northwestern instead of Butler, even though he liked Butler University and was willing to be a walk-on for the 2012-13 season, paying his own way.  Instead he will have a full-time scholarship at Northwestern, who Butler is playing on December 8th.  I was away for almost this entire development, so I cannot give much more information on the situation.

2. Butler will play Gonzaga on Saturday, January 19th at Hinkle Fieldhouse.  I believe this is the Bulldogs' non-conference game in the month of January since 2007, before the Horizon League had the Travel Partner System and league games were not as regularly scheduled.

3. Andrew Smeathers, a sophomore, had his second hip surgery, but could still be ready for the start of formal practice in October.  He seems to be a likely redshirt due to his injuries and the fact that Butler has multiple players at his position (Kellen Dunham, Roosevelt Jones), who were likely to see more minutes even than a healthy Smeathers.

Believe it or not, these three things were the only major news for Butler and the upcoming season, so it could be said that this was a slow news week, especially when you look at what has transpired over the last two months.  Still, it is mid-June, so how much Butler news can the fans really expect?

Blog on Hiatus

This blog will be on hiatus from now until June 17 as I will be on vacation.  Any news about the Bulldogs Men's basketball team during this span of time will be posted when I return.

Bulldogs Schedule as of 6/07/12

Date	Opponent	Notes
Sat 11/10	vs. Elon	Maui Invitational Opening Game
Tues 11/13	@Xavier (non-conference)	ESPN College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon
Mon 11/19		Maui Invitational Championship Round
Tues 11/20		Maui Invitational Championship Round
Wed 11/21		Maui Invitational Championship Round
Tues 11/27	@ Vanderbilt
Sat 12/1	TBA
Wed 12/5	vs. IUPUI
Sat 12/8	@ Northwestern
Sat 12/15	vs. Indiana	Crossroads Classic – Conseco Fieldhouse

Home and Away Conference Opponents

Today, an announcement was made concerning which A-10 teams Butler would play at home, and which ones they would play on the road.  Butler will playing Saint Louis twice in a home and home series, and every other team once, with locations as follows:

Home: Charlotte, Duquesne, Rhode Island, Richmond, St. Bonaventure, Temple and Xavier
Away:  Dayton, Fordham, George Washington, La Salle, Massachusetts, St. Joseph’s and VCU

With my limited knowledge of A-10 teams (other than Xavier), I would say that this is a pretty soft schedule on the road, not playing any teams (not counting their travel partner Saint Louis) that were in the top 4 in the A-10 Standings this past season.  They play a lot of though teams at home such as Temple and Xavier (I still think they will be decent this year), which should help lead the Bulldogs to success in their inaugural year in the Atlantic 10 conference.

Full home and away pairings are available here.

Bulldogs Basketball: Scheduling Issues for 2012-13

Moving to the Atlantic 10 just about over five months before the season begins is quite problematic for the Bulldogs' schedule.  They now have to schedule games against four more non-conference opponents:

• 2 games to account for the switch from 18 Horizon League games to 16 A-10 conference games
• 1 game to account for the fact that the Bulldogs will not be participating in BracketBusters now that they are in the A-10
• 1 additional game to account for the fact that the A-10 conference doesn't allow teams to schedule a regular season conference against a non-Division 1 opponent.  (The Bulldogs would have had one of these games at home had they stayed in the Horizon League for 2012-13)

Since the Butler has already scheduled 5 home games (Ball State, Evansville, Gonzaga, Elon, and IUPUI) and only 2 true road games (@ Xavier, @Vanderbilt), it is likely that they will schedule a couple of home and home series against opponents who they will play on the road this season, and then play against at Hinkle Fieldhouse in 2013-2014.  Butler seems to have lost the 2013 ESPN College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon Game vs. Xavier at Hinkle, and will likely be playing Ball State and Evansville on the road next season, so they will be in desperate need of some home games next season, while playing a few more road games this season.

In the coming months, it will be interesting to see which four non-conference opponents Butler adds to their brutal schedule that is already packed with the Maui Invitational, and a neutral game with the potential #1 team in America Indiana at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, in addition to the above mentioned games.

It will also be interesting to see which teams Butler will play at home and on the road in the A-10.  They will be playing Saint Louis and Xavier twice (although the game at Xavier is a non-conference matchup), and if they will be playing either two home games or two road games per week, or if they will play one of each game per week, which is what the A-10 has done for quite some time now.

All of these issues will unfold in the upcoming months, and we will have a complete schedule released probably some time in September that answers all of our questions we may currently have about Butler's Men's Basketball Schedule for 2012-13.

Nostalgia During Bulldogs' Move to A-10

What I'll Miss about Butler in the Horizon League

While I am excited that the Butler Bulldogs will be challenged by better in-league competition by moving to the A-10, there are still several reasons why I wish they would have stayed in the Horizon League:

1. HLN: How great was it knowing that you could watch every league game and all non-conference home games on the Horizon League Network, especially for someone who doesn't live in Indiana and could see the games on my-INDY TV.  In the A-10, the Bulldogs will have some games on ESPN3, but the quality there is much worse than the quality of the games on HLN with UStream.

2. Full Game archives on Butler's UStream Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hlnbutler

3. Travel Partner System: It was nice knowing that if you saw the Bulldogs playing at UIC on a Thursday, they would be at Loyola that Saturday.  Or if they were at Green Bay on a Friday, they would be at Milwaukee on Sunday.  Or if they were playing Valpo, that would likely be their only league game that week.  The Travel Partner System provided structure to the schedule, structure that the A-10 schedule is really lacking.

4. Playing each league team the same number of times: That is the only way for each team to have a fair conference schedule, playing each team twice, once home and once away.  With the proposed A-10 schedule for 2012-13, Butler could be playing only Saint Louis twice (arguably one of the best teams in the league), and also draw some of the tougher teams on the road and not at home.

5. Will Haskett's Horizon League Rundown: He always covered the top stories in the HL on Rundown each Tuesday.

New Conference, New Season

Butler Bulldogs to Atlantic 10 in 2012-13

So it turns out that Butler is moving to the A-10 a year early, apparently because they would not have been allowed to compete for conference championships in the Horizon League this coming season, meaning they could not get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament next season.  Regardless, it is time to focus on the men's basketball team in the A-10 for 2012-13.  While I do think Butler will be much improved offensively with Rotnei Clarke and Kellen Dunham, they are not getting much defensive help from those two, which is especially troublesome considering the loss of two time Horizon Defensive Player of the Year Ronald Nored.  In a stronger conference, the Bulldogs might struggle a bit on the defensive end, but not too much since this is a Brad Stevens coached team. 

Offensively, this team will be much improved, and not only because of Clarke.  The attention and respect he earns should also free up Chrishawn Hopkins and Chase Stigall, who combined to shoot an atrocious 28.1% from three point range this past season.  Clarke's shooting will also allow Andrew Smith and Kameron Woods to stay in the post more instead of shooting a couple three pointers each game, as I believe they are both far more effective down low.  While the Bulldogs might have some struggles defensively, they will be a very potent offensive team in the A-10, similar to the 2010-11 Bulldogs squad that was sorely missing the defense of Willie Veasley and Gordon Hayward, but thriving on the offense of Shelvin Mack and Matt Howard. 

While I feel that the Bulldogs would be a top two team had they stayed in the Horizon League for one more season, I project they will finish either 5th or 6th in the A-10, just because of the increased competition they will be up against, as well as being worn out from a brutal non-conference schedule.