2021-2022 Season Recap and Looking Ahead

This seasons was a disappointment for everyone involved. To summarize we finished 14-19 (12-19 excluding DII games), including 6-14 in conference play, tied for 10th place. We finished with a NET ranking of #121 and Kenpom ranking of #126 --thats about 80 spots away from the NCAAT bubble. It's probably a little too early to talk about expectations for 2022-2023 season since we do not know what our roster or bench will look like, but I've compiled a few quotes from another thread last summer about would be considered a "successful" 21-22 campaign.

@BigHoss "Year 5 of the LaVall era comes with an incredibly unique roster. Lots and lots of experience, and also some young talent. If utilized properly, I think there is enough there to make the field of 68, and finish 5th or better in the Big East. anything short of that, I would consider a failure"

@tedfrye "Stay healthy should be a tournament team"

@Crash: "Next season will be a success if we finish in the Top 4 of the Big East, and make the 2nd weekend of the NCAA Tournament"

@TheDawgDub95: "Successful - top 3 BEast and Top 20 Nationally
Decent - mid-pack BEast and solid Tournament team with additional signs of Player Development.
Not Good - Anything less than decent."

@ButlerProf "Top 4-5 regular season Big East, Win all but 1, maybe 2 Big East home games, Win 50% Big East road games"

@znelson15 "If we make the round of 32 in the ncaa tourney. This has to happen on my kind with the upperclassmen returning."

@Shane Davis :"This year is definitely the time to learn what LaVall has in mind as far as both style of play and personnel. He's never quite had an experienced roster with this much versatility before, so he should finally be able to put his vision in motion, but now with that comes the realization that he no longer has anymore excuses if they under perform"

@BURph92: "Bare minimum numbers for me to consider the upcoming season a success: Butler goes 8-3 in non-conf games, 11-9 in BE, wins 1 game in BE tourney, & wins 1 game in NCAA tourney. This would leave them finishing 21-14 with a very similar season to Coach Jordan’s first year as HC."

@SnoopDawg: "Maybe I'm crazy, but I think if this team plays well it has final four potential. We need a 2+2 = 5 situation though. The team has to play better than the sum of the individual parts."

@jkcdawgs: "Successful: Bryce bros being more consistent and steady with the rock. A true scorer to emerges (Scooby, Groce, Bo, Taylor, Chuck, etc.). Somebody that’ll get you 15+ every night. 4/5/6 in conference, BE tourney win, Round of 32"

@seadawg: "Hard to imagine another season like last. It's reasonable to forecast some degree of improvement but to what extent."

I hope none of you are LJ apologists all of a sudden

 

Thank for this…

I still believe in my comment and that is why I want a change to happen.

Next year is another missed ncaa tournament and that hurts and I change atleast gives me some hope and excitement


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There were early warning signs, but BU took a beat down against MSU at Hinkle with minimum resistance, I think many folks realized this was going to be another long and dismal season.

 

I too stand behind my comments. One of the most veteran team in all of basketball & we absolutely looked lost for 1/2 the season.
Behind by 10 almost every game, this team lacked a level of cohesion that is shocking for a team with this much returning scoring. Without a shooter, I expected we would bully teams & grind out close games. Instead, we wilted too often.
Maybe we can lure a few shooters with tons of minutes. But we need a #1 scorer, size & PG help. So, basically, I'm asking for the moon to have any hope at a fun season next year.
BTW, thank you for pulling, it's fun to have a look back.

 

It's been a dream of mine to have my words immortalized for all to see, I feel so blessed.


As disappointing as it was to see things regress like they did in the MSU game, for me the concerns became validated after the Texas A&M game. They made mistakes in that game and STILL had a chance to come out with a decent win, and the fact that they were so uncoordinated as a team seven games into the season made me realize that time together would not solve their problems. That was the moment I realized that it might be time to get off the LaVall train.

 

So, we have 8 guys, assuming no transfers out that have 3 years, or more of eligibility. With 3: Tate, Chuck, Jayden, Simas, DJ & Wilmoth. With 4: Pierce and Turnbull.

I felt like, coming into the year, Wilmoth was a year away, but, after the season, I have less faith about his development for next year than I did before. Has anyone heard anything about Pierce and his overall development?

Is there reason to be optimistic that this group can or will be the nucleus of a really good team or two before they graduate?

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No.

And I got to expect Wilmoth transfers if this staff is kept.

We need minimum two impact transfers to have a shot not to be basement level bound next season. (9, 10, 11). And they're out there.

 

Don’t JT, Simas, and DJ still have 4 seasons left?

 

No. The “extra” year only applies for those who played in 2020-2021. Therefore Tate, Wilmoth, and Harris basically got to “replay” their freshmen year this past season. Same goes for someone like Golden who got to replay his junior season this past year.

JT, Hughes, and Simas only have 4 years of eligibility since they weren’t here during Covid. They each have 3 years remaining


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Okay so it looks like we have 9 scholarship players for next year:

1) Tate
2) Harris/Taylor
3) Lukosius/Thomas
4) Hughes/Wilmoth
5) JMM/Turnbull

I put these players in the position they would most excel in. Obviously there will be overlap like Luko at the 1, etc.

Many thought Wilmoth might transfer so that would bring us down to 8, with 2 of them (Turnbull and Thomas) never playing a college game before.


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That's downright scary awful. But when he gave up on '22 it was always going to be a thin roster. But this is just last place worthy...no wonder BG got the f u c k out of dodge.

 

That’s like year two Tom Crean IU level roster right there. Giant yikes. (Maybe a fresh new coach could bring in some half decent transfer because the current staff have shown they can’t…)


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And that's why if we do it, do it now. There has never been a more perfect time than now. We're going to be GOD awful regardless with zero transfer or recruiting momentum, make the damn change.

 

Just looked up some stats on JMM since as of now its looking like he’s our new starter at the 5.

Freshman year: 16 games, 76 minutes, 3FG
Sophomore year: 18 games, 118 minutes, 3FG
Junior year: 12 games, 76 minutes, 1FG


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I guess that means you were the last to know JMM is not an offensive threat?
If you were actually watching games this year you would see that he played interior defense as well as any interior Butler player not named Nze and set picks better than any of them.


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Derek Schultz interviewed John Fanta about college basketball with some national / Big East view of Butler basketball included. Not super in-depth, but interesting to hear his take. https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2021/06/07/schultzs-star-podcast/7586463002/ (if $ blocked, also available for free on Apple Podcasts)

 

Fair criticism from Fanta there. And he's right...I think Butler undervalues itself in a lot of ways. If the job opens there will be plenty of coaches interested in in coming on board and resurrecting this thing. And he's also right that we just don't stack up talent wise in the big east. All he said points to the obvious-a change. I appreciate linking this and it was a good listen.

 

Great listen. Pretty objective, non-emotional, and reasonably informed.

 

Finally had the time to take a long look at stats of our players over the past few years and find trends. Doesn't take a genius to see that we struggled mightily with development these last 3 years, which used to be a staple of Butler Basketball-- Getting "more" out of "less". LJ banked on bringing everyone back and expecting there to be improvement. The problem is not only was there almost no improvement individually, many players got statistically worse in several categories. Hopefully this is a thing of the past and i look forward to doing this again either next year or the year after to see how things change. This posts will also look at specific stats and I will try to extrapolate some takeaways. I specifically left out Taylor/Luko/Hughes since this was their first collegiate year. I also used the year at a previous school if they transferred (hodges 2020 was at ETSU, Groce 2021 was at EMU etc. to compare how they performed once they got to Butler.


FTs showed little "overall" improvement over the years with the exception of Bolden this past year going from 73% to 91%. Several players actually progressively got worse over the years (thompson and Nze slowly declined if you make a trendline.)


FG% again showed little "overall" improvement over time. Hodges, Groce, and Bolden peaked at previous institutions, Golden and Thompson steadily declined from their FR/SO year although Golden had a slight uptick last season compared to 2021.



3P% improvement was seen by Golden and Wilmoth both going from 25% to 35% last season. Other than thompson (barely hitting 25% i guess is an improvmenet), every other player declined in their 3P%. Most notably Harris and Bolden.



REB need to be taken in the context in minutes played. If a player decreased/increased playing time, that will affect how many opportunities they have to carom rebounds. That said, for the past few seasons, no one has really taken "rebounding" as their MO, although that can also be attributed to LJ spreading out minutes across the board.


Pts/Game also needs to be viewed in the context of minutes played. Most notably, Groce averaged 15PPG at EMU and dropped to 4PPG this past season largely due to minutes played. That said, no one reached their "season high" scoring output this past season



lastly we have ORTG and DRTG. These can be misleading if they player doesn't play many minutes (Wilmoth had 2nd highest ORTG while playing very little) but you can see how D efficiency peaked in 2020 and O efficiency peaked in 2021 with our current players.

FIN

 

Thanks for doing all this. There are a bunch of analytics/stat guys on this board, so this should be a very interesting discussion.