I can't say I was surprised by this outcome. An experienced Bulldogs squad against an inexperienced Vanderbilt team that lost its top six players from last year, three of whom are in the NBA right now. Butler won with little stress in the second half, beating the Commodores 68-49.
Clarke continues, Dunham too
Rotnei Clarke's brilliance from downtown continued on Saturday night, shooting 6-9 from behind the arc. Kellen Dunham also played well scoring 12 points, going 2-5 from three. This really illustrates what was wrong with Butler last year. The Bulldogs made 8 threes in this game, all from Clarke and Dunham. (Neither of them played last year)
Chase Stigall's four year long shooting slump
After going 0/3 behind the arc in this game, he is now at 20.7% on threes for the season. He is at 29.1% for his career. In a career that has consistently shown subpar shooting for Stigall (with the exception of moments during his sophomore season), he has gotten worse as his career has gone on. His shooting is so bad, it makes me wonder if he will still be seeing minutes by season's end. To put it in perspective, Zach Hahn's career low in 3 point % in a season was 32.6%, while Chase Stigall's career high in 3 point % for a season is 32.0%.
Woods and Marshall clean the glass
Both athletic big men had a huge impact on the boards, with Marshall pulling down 11 rebounds and Woods pulling down 9. On a night where Andrew Smith and Erik Fromm combined for 4 rebounds, it was good that at least two of Butler's four bigs were rebounding the ball, and that's usually all it will take on a given night.
There wasn't really any other significant statistics from the box score, but I will point out that Alex Barlow has not averaged 18.8 minutes per game over the last six games.
Butler hosts Pennsylvania on Wednesday night at Hinkle Fieldhouse in a rematch of last years College Basketball Invitational matchup.
No comments:
Post a Comment