Butler Notebook: Looking ahead through odds and ends of Xavier victory
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
INDIANAPOLIS – Butler concluded its regular season with crunch-time execution in a win over Xavier. The Bulldogs face Dayton on Thursday afternoon at the Atlantic 10 tournament in New York City.
Let’s explore some odds and ends from the last time Butler took the court.
— Chris Mack, in his fourth season as head coach at Xavier, acknowledged that Brad Stevens used to work at Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. Yet Mack suggested Stevens should hold employment, not as Butler’s coach, not as a marketing associate, but as a computer hardware designer for IBM. The amount of set plays that cat draws up is off the charts, Mack said in complementing Stevens’ spatial genius.
— One such action occurred in the final minute, when Xavier star Semaj Christon fouled Kellen Dunham on an inbounds play. Dunham made the resulting free throws with 43 seconds left to give Butler a 62-60 lead that it would not relinquish. The Bulldogs were throwing the ball in from underneath their own basket. Dunham curled off a screen. Mack said Christon, a freshman, did not make a mistake in committing the foul. He’s either going to foul or give up a layup, Mack said. The coach instead felt Xavier’s defense was beaten on X’s and O’s.
— In the immediate aftermath of Butler’s 84-52 loss to VCU, your humble correspondent described Butler’s defense that day as being of a matador variety. On Saturday, in the process of answering a larger question, Stevens’ mind wandered back to that disappointing afternoon, and he acknowledged, We didn’t guard anybody the whole time. But Stevens pointed out that he is satisfied with how Butler has defended since, and it indeed appears the March 2 effort was an aberration. Perhaps the Bulldogs allowed their offensive struggles against VCU’s HAVOC to affect their focus and intensity at the other end.
— Butler offered a preview of how it might defend an athletic, high-scoring guard in the postseason. Against Christon, who was averaging 15 points and five assists per game, Stevens had his big men blitz Christon when Christon held the ball in a halfcourt pick-and-roll. The strategy seemed to work, as Xavier never got much from those plays, and Christon was prevented from turning the corner and dribbling into the paint. We jumped on him so he can’t split (the defenders), Stevens said. We were trying to get the ball out of his hands. Some teams prefer their big men actually bump the ballhandler or lunge aggressively in front of him. The Bulldogs didn’t come out quite as far and stayed in a traditional stance. Stevens referred to their tactic as a soft blitz. The NCAA tournament is always full of good guards. He may employ the same method against some of them as he did against Christon.
— Xavier sixth man Brad Redford, who entered Saturday averaging about eight points per game, went scoreless. He attempted just two shots in 18 minutes, both from behind the arc. At 45 percent, Redford is the best 3-point shooter in the A-10. Butler’s defense against him was airtight, and rotations strategically accounted for Redford. Nobody respects Brad Redford more than I do, Stevens said. I was saying to the guys, ˜No 3s! No 3s!’ Mission accomplished.
Ben Fahrbach’s photo gallery of Butler-Xavier:
