Butler's Paul Jorgensen, Nate Fowler
LaVall Jordan’s first season as head coach at Butler had its share of successes. There were the 21 wins, a home victory over eventual National Champion Villanova and a fourth straight trip to the NCAA Tournament.
But whatever the Bulldogs have in mind for an encore in Jordan’s second season will have to come without the services of one of the program’s all-time greats in Kelan Martin as well as Tyler Wideman, a dominating presence in the paint for Butler the past few seasons.
OK, so that’s the bad news. The good news, however, is the Bulldogs will return a plethora of premier pieces in order to make a fifth consecutive run at an NCAA Tournament invitation. Not the least of those pieces is junior guard Kamar Baldwin.
The 6-1 Baldwin, a Preseason All-BIG EAST First Team pick heading into the 2018-19 campaign, averaged 15.7 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game last season and his 893 points through his first two seasons are the fourth most in Butler’s history behind legendary Bulldogs Gordon Hayward (992), Chad Tucker (948) and Shelvin Mack (918).
And with Martin, whose 2,047 career points puts him second on Butler’s all-time scoring list, now a memory, along with the wide-bodied Wideman and his 9.3 points and 5.1 rebounds, the Bulldogs will be looking to Baldwin to be their new messiah.
“Obviously we’re going to miss those guys a lot,” said Baldwin, who logged a pair of 30-point games last season, including a 32-point performance against Seton Hall in the BIG EAST Tournament quarterfinals. “Kelan scoring 2,000 points and being the second-leading scorer in Butler history and Tyler with his presence on the offensive glass and the defensive glass and in the post, that’s a lot of production we’re losing. They will be missed tremendously but we learned a lot from those guys.”
What Baldwin said he learned is that he needs to be more of a vocal leader this season and that there is still lots of room for his own game to expand.
“I just need to continue to have a growth mindset and watch a lot of film and learn from the coaching staff so that I can be a better player and person,” Baldwin said.
But Baldwin won’t have to go it alone in keeping Butler among the BIG EAST elite. Senior 3-point threat Paul Jorgensen, who averaged 10.2 points a game last season while delivering 60 three-balls (second only to Martin’s 95), returns to the backcourt, as does sophomore Aaron Thompson, who set a school freshman record for assists with a team-high 118 while starting 32 games. That’s the most starts by a Butler freshman since Mack and Hayward each started 32 contests in the 2008-09 season.
Up front the Bulldogs will return both 6-6 junior Sean McDermott, who averaged 7.5 points and 3.9 rebounds while shooting 43.1 percent from 3-point range, and 6-10 senior Nate Fowler, who came off the bench last season to average 5.9 points and 3.1 rebounds and who said his senior season will also consist of a new role as a leader.
“With Kelan and Tyler gone, what that means for me is an increased load leadership-wise. Just being there for the younger guys if they have any questions,” Fowler said. “Just helping them out on the floor any way I can.”
Baldwin thinks there is more than enough talent returning to help offset the departures of Martin and Wideman.
“Yeah, I think so,” Baldwin said. “Even losing those two guys, we still have a lot of pieces and guys coming back. We’ll have to have some of the young guys step up this year and play some roles. But I think they’re capable of it. They’ve been showing it in practice over the last month so I think we’ll be fine.”
Among those newcomers are 6-9 Bryce Golden, a four-star recruit from Virginia, and 6-7 Markeese Hastings, a stud out of Michigan. The Bulldogs will also have the services of 6-7 Duke transfer Jordan Tucker at the end of the first semester. Tucker is expected to find playing time immediately.
Butler, which was picked fifth in the BIG EAST Coaches Preseason poll, is just one of eight programs in the nation that has managed to win at least one game in each of the past four NCAA Tournaments. Last season the Bulldogs took down Arkansas in the first round before losing by three to Purdue in a second-round game as Jordan became fourth Butler coach to lead the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament victory in his first season, joining Brad Stevens, Thad Matta and Chris Holtmann.
So can Butler, which has made the NCAA Tournament field in 10 of the past 12 seasons, continue its streak of success in March? Fowler thinks so, and he credits both Martin and Wideman for passing on “The Butler Way” to this current bunch of Bulldogs.
“Yeah I think so, for sure,” Fowler said. “Those two guys might be gone but having them here last year and having our younger guys going against them in practice, that just sheds off onto them and that process just continues. As long as Butler keeps having great guys like Kelan and Tyler, we’re going to continue to have great guys coming in after them and have success.”