Butler relies on experience to succeed

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS

When Matt Howard arrived at Butler, he was just trying to fit in.

There were nuances and playbooks to learn, and upperclassmen were trying to teach him how to win the Butler way.

Now, after spending one season adjusting and another re-teaching those lessons to his young teammates, the junior center is reaping the benefits of college basketball’s rarest commodity — continuity.

“When you get used to people, you can get into a rhythm,” Howard said.

He certainly knows what to expect from his teammates.

What Butler has done over the past two seasons defies the conventional wisdom of today’s game. At a time when one-and-done recruits dominate the national stage and mid-major programs rely heavily on seniors, Butler has gone down a different road.

It did not lose a single player off last season’s roster, and coach Brad Stevens has used the same starting lineup — Howard, Gordon Hayward, Shelvin Mack, Ronald Nored and Willie Veasley — for 61 of the last 66 games. That’s three sophomores, a junior and one senior. The only time Stevens changed the lineup was because of injuries.

The dividends are priceless.

“As a point guard, it really makes it easy when you know where everybody is going to be and what everyone is going to do,” Nored said. “You still have to work on things at practice, but it makes it a lot harder as a point guard when you don’t know where they’re going to be.”

Butler can see the results.

A year ago, with three freshmen and a sophomore starting, the Bulldogs struggled in February and March and wound up losing to LSU in the first round of the NCAA tournament. In November, when Nored was trying to play his way back from a stress fracture in his left leg, the Bulldogs lost twice in California.

Since Nored’s recovery, the Bulldogs (30-4) have been virtually unbeatable.

They have won 22 straight games, the Horizon League regular-season and tourney titles and on Saturday reached their third regional semifinal since 2003. They haven’t lost since Dec. 22 at Alabama-Birmingham, and a win Thursday over top-seeded Syracuse would move Butler within one victory the Final Four.

Players insist they wouldn’t have made it here without all those shared experiences and point to Hayward’s late gamble against Murray State as the perfect example.

The Horizon player of the year started to trap Racers guard Isaiah Canaan, then backed off into the passing lane where he deflected the pass into the backcourt to run out the clock. Butler 54, Murray State 52.

It was a gamble Hayward took, in part, because he knew how his teammates would react.

“A lot of it was instinctual, but playing with each other, I knew the guys would have my back,” he said.”