Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Butler doesn’t look for real, not yet at least

AMHERST, Mass. -- The student section was ready 50 minutes before the game and headed for the exits before the final horn sounded. The Butler Bulldogs came into the Mullins Center and silenced the crowd en route to a much-needed 73-62 bounce-back win against UMass on Thursday night.

Butler is coming off a home loss to Saint Louis followed by a 30-point blowout to VCU. In a win, when Butler held the lead for all 40 minutes, head coach Brad Stevens and Co. are now able to put a difficult two-game slide in the past and gear towards conference and NCAA tournaments.

“To be 23-7 with our schedule is pretty remarkable,” said Stevens. “Tonight was a step forward in playing well.

“We got drilled. We’ve gotten drilled a couple times this season and every time we’ve gotten better. So that was a good thing at VCU in the long run.”

Stevens added in the postgame press conference that he believed they caught the Rams at their best and after coughing the ball up 20 times, he’s probably accurate with that statement. Kameron Woods, who scored 17 points, said the team held a meeting to discuss each players roles while Andrew Smith mentioned the practices have been more focused.

“I don’t think we questioned ourselves, we needed to regroup,” said Woods. “Even the games before that we weren’t playing as well as we should have. We eked out a couple of close wins and sometimes you get satisfied with that.”

Butler appeared to regain that toughness, against a UMass team still fighting for a spot on the bubble (which likely bursted after Thursday). The Bulldogs have five conference losses on the season. In the Horizon League, an at-large bid is not a reality, it Butler’s first year in the A10, it’s a solid start, especially considering the schedule its faced.

“To go on the road and have play in the environments we have in all the way through the A10 and to be 5-3 in those games is quiet an accomplishment,” said Stevens. “I think it’s a huge win for us. People don’t understand how hard it is to come on the road and win. I told them that they earned some Butler stripes tonight.

Butler had to go on the road at VCU, La Salle, and had to play Saint Louis twice. Match that with an out of conference schedule with wins over No. 1 Indiana, North Carolina, Gonzaga and Marquette. The Bulldogs have also been handed a heavy-dose of late-game situations, both which have go for and against them.

Butler was knocked down to end February with a loss at home. March didn’t start off any better with a 32-point whooping. However, true to form Stevens and his Bulldogs are getting back up. The first step in the right direction has been made and heading into tournament play, history shows never to rule out Butler.

Terrence is also the lead writer at NEHoopNews.com and can be followed on Twitter: @terrence_payne