Butler Preview: What Does Thad Matta's Return Mean for the Bulldogs?
Things can change in a hurry in college basketball.
Butler was ranked as high as fifth in the nation at one point during the 2019-20 season — LaValle Jordan’s third at the helm of his alma mater. The Bulldogs looked primed to enter the 2020 Tournament as a fifth or six seed, and would have given Jordan his second tourney team in three years had the pandemic not cut the season short.
Butler never got on track from there. They finished 10-15 during the odd Covid-impacted season of 2020-21, and despite having one of the most experienced teams in the country last season, they once again finished five games under .500 (14-19 overall, 6-14 in the Big East).
They closed the regular season by losing five straight games, before taking out Xavier in the first round of the Big East Tournament and playing #11 Providence down to the wire.
That wasn’t enough to save their coach’s job, however.
Jordan was fired on April 1, in a move that was panned by Jeff Goodman (who previously worked at ESPN, CBS and Fox):
Offensive woes eventually did Jordan in. After his teams finished 22nd, 53rd, and 25th in offensive efficiency in his first three years at Butler, Jordan’s team ranked 164th two years ago and 187th last season. They shot a horrific 29.7% as a team from three in 2021-22.
Two days after Jordan was fired, Butler announced the hiring of Thad Matta, the 55 year old coach who led Ohio State to a pair of Final Fours before stepping away due to health reasons in 2017.
Matta’s return to coaching will be one of the most intriguing storylines in all of college basketball. He is a Butler graduate with a heck of a resume.
He coached Butler for one season — the 2000-01 campaign in which the Bulldogs went 24-8 and reached the NCAA Tournament where they drilled a Wake Forest team led by a pair of future NBA players, before falling to the Gilbert Arenas/Richard Jefferson/Luke Walton-led Arizona Wildcats.
(Somewhat interesting side note: LaVall Jordan was Matta’s leading scorer in that tournament).
Then it was on to Xavier for Matta, who reached the NCAA Tournament in all three of his seasons there. They were nationally ranked in both the 2001-02 season, and in 2002-03 (when they were ranked as high as #10 by the AP voters, and finished the year ranked 12th behind the terrific duo of David West and Lionel Chalmers).
After Xavier, it was on to Columbus.
Ohio State was a powerhouse with Matta at the helm:
They won 20 games in each of his first 12 seasons there
They were ranked in the top ten of the final AP poll in seven of his 13 years in Columbus
Ohio State reached the Final Four in 2007 and 2012, losing in the national title to Florida in ‘07 and by a bucket to Kansas in the 2012 semis
The Buckeyes won four Big Ten Tournaments and took home the regular season title five times
There’s no questioning the credentials. Now the question becomes: how will four years away from the game impact him?
Matta returned to college basketball a year ago, working for Mike Woodson in his first year at Indiana.
He returns to Butler after 21 years away. Matta and Sean Miller (newly-hired at Xavier after unceremoniously being fired from Arizona) have the potential to make the Big East exponentially more challenging.
Matta had a solid offseason, retaining eight of the nine players eligible to return this season, while adding four players via transfer.
Perhaps his biggest recruiting victory came from within after 6’6 Simas Lukosius decided to return to Butler after entering his name into the transfer portal. Lukosius may have given us a glimpse of what’s ahead when he went for 27 points and seven rebounds in the Bulldogs’s Big East Tournament win over Xavier. Perhaps he can do even more damage playing at a less plodding pace under Matta.
Junior-to-be Chuck Harris led the team in scoring last season at 11.4 points per game, albeit he did so quite inefficiently (37.8% from the field, 29.8% from three), while the team’s next three top scorers from a year ago are all gone.
Freshman guard Jayden Taylor quietly put up a solid first season, scoring 8.2 points a game, while the promising six foot guard Myles Tate tore his ACL in the 2021 Big East Tournament and played sparingly after returning mid-season.
6’9 forward Myles Wilmouth is an energy provider who prepped in Rhode Island at St. Andrew’s in Barrington.
Butler simply had to get bigger on the interior, and Matta will look to transfers Manny Bates (NC State) and Jalen Thomas (Georgia State) to fill that void.
Bates was one of the best shot blockers in the country prior to missing all of last season after shoulder surgery. His 147 blocked shots in two seasons at NC State ranked fourth all-time in program history. Bates led the ACC in blocked shots in both of his seasons in the league.
The 6’10, 230 pound Thomas comes with far less fanfare, but he was a double figure scorer as a sophomore, and the defensive anchor as a junior on a team that played in the NCAA Tournament. He put up 12 points and nine rebounds before fouling out against Gonzaga in the first round of the tournament last March.
Butler also added 6’4 guard Eric Hunter Jr., a graduate transfer from Purdue who made the Big Ten’s All Defensive Team last year. He averaged just under eight points a game for an offensively-loaded Purdue group, and made 23-43 from three in conference play. Hunter Jr. started 52 of 54 games during his sophomore and junior seasons before splitting his time starting and coming off the bench last year (19 starts in 37 games).
Perhaps the most intriguing addition is 6’8 forward Ali Ali, who comes in from Akron. Ali is a lean (205 pound), versatile scorer whose production grew from 1.1 points per game as a freshman to 7.2 as a sophomore and 13.9 his junior year. He shot over 46% from the field and 40% from long range last year, with his biggest night coming in a 32-point effort against Buffalo in which he attempted 22 free throws.
[Related: Highlights of Butler Newcomer Ali Ali vs. Ohio State]
Add it all together, and Butler should be more physically imposing in 2022-23. They’ve got a coach at the helm who has won 74% of his games, was named Coach of the Year in all three leagues he’s been in (including three times in the Big Ten), and coached five consensus All Americans. One of those All Americans was Greg Oden, who is on Matta’s new staff at Butler.
A lot of pieces will have to come together for Butler to return to the NCAA Tournament in 2023, but if Matta can come close to replicating the success he had prior to his four-year hiatus, Butler just became a lot tougher.