Butler bounces back to form with win over Duquesne
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
INDIANAPOLIS – You can stop pressing the panic button and surfing for tickets to those nutty First Four games in Dayton. Apparently there will be no late-season swoon.
The natural order returned on Tuesday as fifteenth-ranked Butler said enough already and soundly beat Duquesne 68-49 to quell recent offensive struggles and assure itself of just a half-game deficit in the Atlantic 10 race. Butler can advance into first place with a win on Friday in what should be a boisterous Hinkle Fieldhouse with Saint Louis in town.
For Butler, the key was upping the aggression after playing passively against a 2-3 zone in the opening minutes. The Bulldogs came out strong on both ends, denying Andre Marhold touches in the paint, holding the Dukes to no fast-break points and getting a bounce-back game from Khyle Marshall (14 points) to cruise to the easy victory.
Our guys were locked in defensively, said Butler coach Brad Stevens, and I thought they were much better-paced offensively.
Certainly there was little doubt which was the better team – it was the 11th loss in 12 tries this season for Duquesne against A-10 competition and the Dukes fell to 46-116 all-time against ranked opponents. Nonetheless, the Dukes were in shouting distance well into the first half at 20-14 before a barrage of jump shooting put the game away. Kellen Dunham made three and Andrew Smith and Alex Barlow one apiece in a 16-8 run to close the period, putting Butler up by 14 entering the second half.
However, one could argue the key player made his presence felt later. The Bulldogs won in a blowout thanks largely to the inspired play of their power forward Marshall, who scored seven points in 4 ½ minutes to start the second half, was responsible for two steals and earned four free throws in a 23-minute stint. Duquesne counterpart Quevyn Winters, who put up big numbers against Temple last week, was invisible with Marshall on the floor.
Khyle has always risen to the occasion as the season has progressed, Stevens said. It was good for me to see him have that success. I like the fact we got him the ball and what he can do with that ball. We’re toward that latter point of the season.
No doubt. And Butler is 14-0 when Marshall scores at least 10 points. One of Marshall’s rare negative plays included the game’s only chance for a highlight. At 9:34 of the first half, he went up for an open shot at a lob on the north end, letting the ball brush his fingertips off the rim and out of bounds.
That turnover became huge because of Marshall’s history. Marshall played only 11 minutes in the first half and hadn’t scored since a pair of early buckets. Notoriously inconsistent, and coming off a four-point outing at Fordham, Marshall didn’t sulk the rest of the night and instead kept battling.
After the miscue, Marshall played a stretch of 4:15, during which the Bulldogs extended a six-point lead to nine. Marshall had a steal but little else during that time. He came back in at the start of the second half, at which time a 14-point edge jumped to 20 in a little over five minutes as Marshall scored nine points.
That was straight out of the Shelvin Mack school of mental resiliency – not surprising since Marshall saw Mack up close and personal as a teammate for one success-filled season and has been proudly following Mack’s NBA career for the past two years. Indeed, Marshall knows he must compartmentalize his emotions more successfully, just as Mack had done for the final two years of his Butler career in pressure-packed tournament games.
I am very hard on myself, Marshall said. It’s something I need to start to be mature about. Sometimes I’m more frustrated than these coaches are. It’s part of me needing to grow up and just worry about the outcome of the team rather than worrying about myself. I can’t be having a pity party about me when we’re winning. There’s no point. I’m just trying to do whatever it takes to win.
Marshall didn’t need to worry about doing enough to win Tuesday. Even a zero in the scoring column wouldn’t have stopped Butler from rolling over the Dukes, and taking away Marshall’s production wasn’t going to change a 19-point scoreboard gap. Marshall himself didn’t seem to focus on the smaller details when he spoke to the media after the game.
Instead, it was Butler’s recently poor execution that had the team’s attention, and Butler’s inefficient attack – they had shot 39 percent in each of the previous two games – was nowhere to be seen.
As a team, we look at the film, said Barlow, who scored six points and grabbed seven rebounds, his first significant contribution in a month. The coaches gave us a couple things to improve. We wanted to do that to get ready for Saint Louis.
We’re 22-5, Stevens said. The most passionate basketball players never hit a wall. We’re a good team. These guys have nothing to hang their heads about.
As usual, he’s right. The reality of the Bulldogs all season has been that they’re pretty good offensively, and their body of work should earn them a reprieve even when they don’t look their best. More often than not, the Bulldogs are better at home. Therefore, Tuesday’s date with Duquesne offered the perfect opportunity to right the ship, and they did.
That gives them some confidence heading into Friday, when, though they didn’t even play a competitive game at Saint Louis in Round 1, and even against the same team that hounded their talented junior big into two points and five turnovers in January, the rematch offers Marshall — and Butler fans- a chance to hush the voices of doubt.
