Gameday Preview: Butler vs. St. Joseph’s

Pumas logo
Who: Saint Joseph’s College Pumas
Where: Hinkle Fieldhouse
When: November 7th at 7:00 PM
TV: WISH-TV
Radio: 107.5 FM (Joined in progress on 1070 AM and 93.5 FM)

After an easy, but not always pretty 79-44 win last Saturday, the Bulldogs are looking to improve upon their performances as they take one step closer to the regular season opener against the Citadel. The Pumas are led by head coach Tom Church, and the Division II GLVC members are not looking to make things easy on themselves as they start out their season. The Pumas start at Hinkle Fieldhouse, then will play again nearly 48 hours later at Bradley University against the Braves before starting their regular season campaign in Louisville, KY at the GLVC/GLIAC Crossover Classic, before heading to play the Pittsburgh Panthers in another exhibition on November 17th. The Pumas lost their top scorer and stud guard in Cameron Vines last season, so Butler should be able to have their way with the Pumas, who were picked 8th in their conference preseason poll. Saint Joseph’s is a team that is going to get out and run, as they averaged 74 ppg last season, but there should be plenty of opportunities for Butler to play the faster pace that Holtmann wants for his team, considering the Pumas also gave up over 83 ppg last year. Here are a couple of guys from Rensselaer that Butler fans should keep their eyes on tomorrow:

Tidwell_NathanNathan Tidwell – 6’6, 205 lbs SR F – Tidwell is the Pumas’ leading returning scorer and rebounder this year at 10.1 points and 5.4 rebounds per contest. He’s also fairly versatile as a forward, averaging 1.6 assists per game last year. Tidwell isn’t an incredibly efficient scorer from the outside, shooting 32.1% from deep and 62.9% from the foul line. Inside the arc he’s a little more effective, hitting nearly 50% of those attempts. Judging by Saint Joseph’s lack of size, this could be who Chrabascz will be facing off with when the game starts tomorrow.

Gore_DawsonDawson Gore – 6’0, 185 lbs SR G – Gore is someone who is going to be pulling the trigger from deep nearly every time he shoots it (42.1% last season). Other than that though, don’t expect him to have a lot of the ball handling responsibilities. Assuming he starts and Dunham guards him, I would be interested to see if Kellen tries to take him inside at all to use his height advantages to their fullest.

Seele_JordanJordan Seele – 6’9, 235 lbs SR F – Seele is the biggest Puma the Bulldogs will face tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if Tyler Wideman will have made some improvements on keeping his feet moving in the paint defensively. Seele averaged 7.4 ppg, and all of those were exclusively earned in the post, where he shot 52.7%, and he is also a solid free throw shooter, knocking in 72.9% of his attempts. He’s a solid rebounder, gathering in 4.2 per game in just over 20 minutes of action. As stated before, the big challenge for Butler’s bigs is to keep a guy like Seele from getting easy looks at the hoop, so we’ll see how that goes tomorrow.

What to watch for on Butler’s end:

3 point shooting – While Kellen Dunham will always be the prime weapon that Butler uses from deep, to truly start making this offense as good as it has the potential to be, the Bulldogs need a couple more guys to step up and stretch the floor. Outside of Dunham, the Bulldogs shot 3-16 from deep (18.75%).

Free throw shooting – Can Butler keep the good times rolling at the foul stripe? While just an exhibition, Butler went 20-23 (87%) from the free throw line last Saturday, and this would be a huge development if this were to continue. Butler was 205th in the country at 68.6% last year. If they can get that up to around 75% for the year, they’d likely be in the top 50 in the country, so that should be a place where a team that prides itself on winning the close ones can make a difference every night.

Defense – While Butler held Taylor to just 25% shooting last Saturday, that appeared to me to be more due to Taylor’s issues with hitting open looks rather than the Bulldogs playing a suffocating style of defense that the team has become known for. Especially in the paint, where Butler struggled at times to defend the rim last year, Butler has to continue to become more and more solid of a unit as they head towards the regular season.

So what do you think are the keys for Butler tomorrow? What are you looking forward to seeing? Let us know in the comments section below along with the message board.

Go Dawgs.

The thread view count is

Leave a Reply