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.