Defensive Minded Butler Not Fazed by No. 6 Ranking
By Sean Brennan
Special to BIGEAST.com
Sean McDermott has been through the wars in his four seasons with the Butler Bulldogs. There have been two trips to the NCAA Tournament in his first three seasons, including a visit to the Sweet 16 as a redshirt freshman, and he helped Butler reach the semifinals of the BIG EAST Tournament two years ago.
But there have also been lean times, like last season, when the Bulldogs experienced a rare disappointing campaign as they finished with a 16-17 overall record and were 7-11 in conference play.
So with the return of the good times to Indianapolis this season, with the Bulldogs steamrolling their way to a 14-1 start, the release of the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll on Monday would see Butler reach heights never achieved before in school history.
And when the poll revealed Butler as the nation’s sixth-ranked program, how did the Bulldogs celebrate the historic news? Hoots? Hollers? High Fives? Was it like Mardi Gras in Indianapolis Monday evening?
Not exactly.
“To be completely honest we haven’t paid all that much attention to it,” said McDermott, the Bulldogs’ senior and second-leading scorer. “Obviously we saw it but we haven’t let it impact our thought process or anything like that. We’re just moving on and trying to get better everyday.”
It would be quite a feat for the Bulldogs to improve all that much on what they have accomplished so far this season. First off, there are those 14 wins in their first 15 games this season, with Butler’s lone loss coming by a single point at Baylor on Dec. 10. But they have also put together an overwhelmingly stingy defense, one that is ranked fourth in the nation in scoring defense at 54.1 points a game and has held 11 of Butler’s 15 opponents under 60 points.
The latest to experience the Bulldogs’ suffocating ‘D’ was the high-scoring Creighton Bluejays, who came into their game at Butler last Saturday off a 92-point explosion vs. Marquette. But when the dust settled Saturday at Hinkle Fieldhouse, the Bluejays found themselves on the short end of a 14-point loss and managed just 57 points in the game.
“We knew how skilled Creighton was offensively and we knew we had to come out and get stops if we wanted to win the game,” said McDermott, who logged 18 points and 11 rebounds in the win. “We really worked hard throughout the week preparing for them, getting back in transition and limiting their three-point attempts and makes. And I thought we executed very well in both those areas. I just think hanging our hats on our defense has been crucial for us this season.”
It’s been a stellar rebound season for the Bulldogs, and while last season’s disappointment is not an everyday conversation, everyone remembers last year’s lost season and it has helped fuel the Bulldogs this season.
“We don’t focus too much on last season but it is in the back of our minds,” McDermott said. “But I think we went into this season really hungry to improve and I think we’re doing that with a lot of help from our coaches.”
As you might expect from a team which such a high defensive ranking, head coach LaVall Jordan spends copious amounts of time at each practice fine tuning his defensive schemes.
“A lot of our practice is focused on defense,” McDermott said. “Obviously we get some offensive skill work in but a majority of our practice is focused on the defensive end.”
Defense might not be nearly as sexy as offense. It’s not like sinking a buzzer-beater or tossing in a pretty reverse layup. But sexy doesn’t win championships. Defense does, and that’s how Jordan got his players to buy into his defense-first philosophy.
“The defensive end is what wins games,” McDermott said. “You could go out and score 100 points but if you can’t guard anybody you’re not going to win the game. The simple fact is defense is what wins games and that’s all it took for everybody to buy in.”
McDermott said watching teammates make big defensive stops becomes contagious out on the floor as the players feed off of each other’s play.
“I think we definitely do. When you get one stop you want to get the next one,” McDermott said. “We track how many stops in a row we get in games and how many kills we get, which is three defensive stops in a row. So those are all stats that we know about and take a lot of pride in.”
While McDermott said the Bulldogs don’t celebrate being No. 6 in the country, they do pay attention to that No. 4 ranking in scoring defense. That number, McDermott said, is special to the ‘Dogs.
“I think that’s one of the areas that we take the most pride in,” McDermott said. ‘We’ve been pretty good defensively but we haven’t played a full 40 minutes of great defense yet. So we think our defense can improve and we’re striving everyday to reach that point.”
With a 14-1 record, the No. 6 national ranking and a defense that can even get better, according to McDermott (not such great news for other BIG EAST teams if he’s right), has this season come as a bit of a surprise for a Bulldogs team picked eighth in the conference’s preseason poll?
“I wouldn’t say we’ve surprised ourselves,” McDermott said. “Not to sound arrogant, but we believe in ourselves. We’ve been through all these hard challenges together so we knew what we were made of and we’ve just gone out and played Butler basketball and it’s gotten us to this point.”
A true indication of how dedicated the Bulldogs are to dominating the defensive end came when McDermott was asked a simple question: Would McDermott, who averages 11.8 points a game, leads Butler with 34 made three-pointers and is also tops on the team in three-point shooting percentage (44.7%) prefer to drain a long three-ball as time expired to win a game or make a brilliant defensive stop to seal a Bulldog victory?
McDermott wasted no time in replying.
“I’d say a defensive stop, without a doubt, because it would come as part of a team,” McDermott said. “There is no individual portion to it. So without a doubt, making that defensive stop.”
It was pointed out to McDermott that neither of the great Butler teams that reached back-to-back NCAA Championship games in 2010 and 2011 were ever ranked as high as this Bulldogs outfit. So could we be looking at another very special season blossoming at Butler this year?
“Obviously those teams are the standard here at Butler,” McDermott said. “Everybody here looks up to them but we want to write our own story. And we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen.”