Game preview: Butler

It has been a struggle for Butler this season. After a 7-3 start that included a nice road win over Oklahoma, the Bulldogs have stumbled to a 13-17 record with a 6-13 mark in the Big East.

The Wildcats played one of their best games of the season in the January 16 meeting with Butler, throttling the Bulldogs in an 82-42 victory. The ‘Cats shot 59.6% overall in that game and 63.2% from 3 while limiting Butler to 30.8% overall and 26.9% from 3. The Bulldogs hit just 34.6% of their 2-point attempts. In addition, ‘Nova was dominant on the boards, building a 35-21 advantage on the glass. The ‘Cats won points in the paint 24-14 and second-chance points 11-6. Butler never led.

However, Jay Wright doesn’t think there’s much the ‘Cats can take from that big win that will be relevant to Saturday’s meeting. “Not much,” Wright said. “They were coming off injuries, coming off COVID, we were playing really well at that time. We kind of look at that as, it was such a long time ago, we’re trying to look at that as not much comparable. And they’re playing so differently now, playing at home, so not much.”

Looking at the metrics, nothing truly jumps out as a strength for this Butler team. Probably its best area has been in defending the 3, where it limits opponents to 31.1%. However, that 3-point defense provided little resistance to Villanova last time out. Despite not being a great rebounding team (32.3 per game), Butler has done a decent job keeping opponents off the offensive glass, ranking 138th in opponent’s offensive rebound percentage.

Offense, in particular, has been a struggle for the Bulldogs. They average just 63.3 points per game, shooting 41.9% from the field and 30.6% from deep. They’ve been held under 60 points 13 times this season, going 2-11 in those games.

Defensively the Bulldogs have been a bit better. They surrender 66.1 points per game. That’s due in large part to the stingy 3-point defense and doing a decent job of not give opponents second changes.

Butler doesn’t force a lot of turnovers, but it doesn’t commit a whole lot of them either. We saw that play out in the first meeting between the teams when ‘Nova had 11 turnovers and Butler had 12.

Everything we’ve presented so far points to an easy ‘Nova victory, and of course the ‘Cats would like to simply replicate what they did the first time against Butler. While the numbers indicate that parts of that performance can be replicated, most notably the 2-point shooting and the rebounding, they also indicate that the 3-point shooting was an aberration. But beyond the fact that it’s not easy to replicate the kind of performance Villanova had in the first meeting between the teams, there is another cause for concern here: Hinkle Fieldhouse.

It may sound silly to give so much weight to a venue, but there are numbers to back up the perception that Hinkle has been a bugaboo for ‘Nova. Before we get into the ‘Nova-specific numbers, we should note that the Bulldogs are 9-6 at home this season. Despite having a .433 overall winning percentage this season, they have a .600 winning percentage at home. Butler has taken down Creighton and Marquette at Hinkle, suffered a one-point overtime loss to Providence at home and its lone non-conference home loss came against Michigan State. The Bulldogs clearly play better at home.

But it’s deeper than that for Villanova. For whatever reason, the Bulldogs just seem to play the ‘Cats tough at Hinkle no matter the circumstances. Since Big East realignment, Villanova is just 4-4 at Hinkle and is just 1-4 in its last five trips there. Conversely, the ‘Cats are 7-1 at home against Butler during that stretch. Across those eight home games, ‘Nova has a +99 scoring margin over Butler. At Hinkle, that scoring margin is -12.

Villanova is aware of the Hinkle mojo. But Wright doesn’t put much stock into it being something about the building, rather he just thinks a good program plays there.

“This has always been a tough place for us to play,” Wright said. “I know people have talked about Hinkle Fieldhouse for us, it’s not Hinkle Fieldhouse, it’s the team’s really good. The teams we play against are really good. Butler has played well at home all year this year so we know they’re gonna play extremely well against us.”

While Wright has a point (Butler has been ranked between 16-52 in KenPom for many of these meetings) there are also some outliers, such as last season’s loss at Hinkle when the Bulldogs were No. 124 in KenPom (they’re currently 131).

There is also the 101-93 loss on December 30, 2017, a game that can send chills down the spine of ‘Nova fans to this day because of how it happened. The Bulldogs were lights-out offensively, hitting 55.3% of their 2-point attempts and raining down 15 3s on the ‘Cats at a clip of 68.2%. It was an otherworldly shooting performance, and it was produced by a Butler team ranked 44th in KenPom. Oh, and Villanova happened to be ranked No. 1 by KenPom heading into that game.

All of that is to say that the fear of Hinkle is very real and very justified. For whatever reason, it has legitimately been a struggle for the ‘Cats at Hinkle. Some of it can certainly be attributed to Butler being a pretty good program, but it’s also fair to acknowledge that there’s more to it than that.

So, despite the result in the previous meeting between the teams, and despite what the records and the stats and the advanced metrics say, there will be a bit of trepidation across Nova Nation leading up to tipoff. Whether or not the ‘Cats can quickly ease those concerns remains to be seen.

The game is scheduled for a noon tipoff on FOX.