Butler flops against Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

Go ahead and say it. Shelvin Mack knows that you’re ready with a disparaging word or two. Ronald Nored knows it, too. And the rest of the Butler basketball players do, too, for that matter.

Louisville 88, Butler 73.

What is America going to say today about the darlings of the 2010 NCAA tournament, the team that came an inches away from toppling Duke in the national championship game?

“People will say Butler’s not good,” Mack said. “They’re always ready to say that.”

“People will say Butler is overrated and not as good as advertised,” Nored said. “They’ll say Louisville exposed Butler.”

Take that, haters!

Everyone doubts UConn, but Jeff Goodman says they keep proving the doubters wrong.

Then came a shrug from Nored, one of the Bulldogs’ three returning starters from the team that toppled Syracuse, Kansas State and Michigan State in the NCAA tournament last spring.

“And they did,” Nored said.

On Tuesday, Louisville played its first game in the KFC Yum! Center, its spectacular, new, 22,000-seat playpen along the Ohio River. And the 16th-ranked Bulldogs, in their second game of the season, looked like a team that needed water wings.

Here are the measurements of the exposure: Butler (1-1) was never closer than 10 points for the final 24 minutes. One Butler starter – Mack – made a field goal in the first 30 minutes.

There’s more: Mack made 8 of 17 shots. The rest of coach Brad Stevens’ team shot 30 percent. Butler center Matt Howard had 23 points in 22 minutes, but don’t be dazzled, because he sat for 16 minutes in the first half because the senior made a pair of freshman-looking reaching fouls.

“If I’m in the game and I don’t have those stupid fouls, our offense is able to get into more of a flow,” Howard said. “Just a couple of really stupid fouls.”

“I don’t think it’s rocket science for everybody,” Stevens said. “We got outplayed.”

A historical note: It was Butler’s worst loss since a 16-point defeat to Wisconsin-Milwaukee in March 2006 in the Horizon League tournament championship game. It was also the first time Butler has given up 88 points since the 2001-02 season against Wright State.

This was against a Louisville team that has generally been predicted to finish eighth, ninth or 10th in the Big East. Yes, predictions about the demise of Rick Pitino’s program appear premature, especially if Rakeem Buckles keeps scoring 17 points with 11 rebounds and Pitino also gets double-figure scoring performances from four other guys.

But some will whisper and wonder: Is Butler going to wobble now that Gordon Hayward has given up his final two seasons to play for the Utah Jazz? Has the hurricane of hype the Bulldogs whipped up with their feel-good NCAA run last season wiped the crisp edge off Stevens’ team?

“We’re past that,” Nored said. “I think we’ve been past that for a long time.

“The things that we can take from last year are the values that we took to get there. I think you also can tell that your success of last year doesn’t determine your success of this year. I don’t think we’re stuck in that.”

There is work to do, but there was work for the Bulldogs to do last season, too. People remember March. They forget November and December. Butler lost four games before conference play began last season, including a 10-point pop from Alabama-Birmingham.

“It’s Nov. 16, and if we hang our heads, we won’t get better,” Stevens said. “If we chalk it up as just another game, we’re not going to get better. We’ve got to learn what we didn’t do well and move forward.”

The temptation is to say Stevens will have to tweak the lineup because his two new starters – Garrett Butcher and Shawn Vanzant – missed their only four shots and had four rebounds, two assists.

But this team belongs to Howard, Mack and Nored, a senior and a pair of juniors, guys who understand what it takes to compete against the likes of Jacob Pullen, Durrell Summers and Nolan Smith.

As bad as Butler was on offense, the Bulldogs were worse on defense. Much worse. Duke was the only team that scored 60 on Butler in the NCAA tournament last season, and the Blue Devils finished with 61. Louisville had 61 with eight minutes to play Tuesday – and kept surging.

“I don’t think it was we were not playing hard,” Nored said. “We were kind of on our own islands as opposed to playing all five together on the floor. When that happens, we’re not very good.

“Once we get back to what we do, it’s going to be really good for us. We’re going to come back, we’re going to work and we’re going to fix that. I promise you.”

America will be watching.