Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty
INDIANAPOLIS — It came down to two free throws and a missed shot at the buzzer. For Butler fans, they had hoped the story would go the former way for the Bulldogs and the latter way for the Golden Gophers of Minnesota. Sadly, the roles were reversed.
Butler and Minnesota went toe-to-toe for the entire 40 minutes of game time late Tuesday night inside Hinkle Fieldhouse, and it would be the Gophers who came out on top 73-72 in the first round of the NIT. The loss ends what is very as a season of progress for head coach Thad Matta’s team.
“You hate, I hate for this season to be over,” Matta said after the game. “I told these guys, this team, they gave me life. They gave me life and they gave me passion.”
It was not without passion that Butler squared off with their Big Ten counterpart in a late tip-off shortly after 9 p.m. The Bulldogs were reminded that the game would not be an easy task early as Minnesota’s Pharrel Payne came out attacking the basket from the opening tip, hitting a bucket, and drawing a foul on Jahmyl Telfort.
Payne’s subsequent free throw made it a 3-0 lead early for the Gophers. The foul would not be indicative of the night Telfort went on to have in his last game with the Bulldogs.
The Dawgs found their groove shooting though, evening the score and taking the lead with an early three from Posh Alexander. From there Minnesota found an even better groove and proceeded on an 11-0 run to give themselves some separation.
Like many games this season, Butler found themselves in a hole in the first half. Instead of grinding from behind the rest of the way, the Bulldogs got it together and with an 11-2 swing of their own cut it to a 26-25 game with 4:47 left to play in the first half.
The run fueled by Butler’s three seniors in Telfort, DJ Davis, and Jalen Thomas, set the table for Butler to go into the locker room at halftime with a 38-36 lead.
Much like the start of the game, Minnesota scored first to start the second half. But Butler refused to implode early on and actually extended their lead to as much as 51-44 at the 14:05 mark. The Gophers then began to dig themselves out of their hole (no pun intended).
Mike Mitchell, Jr. and Cam Christie hit back-to-back 3-pointers to cut the Butler lead to 51-50 in no time at all. The Bulldogs only surrendered the lead once over the next several minutes from that juncture as the Gophers stuck to the hip of every mad shot from Butler like Velcro.
With 22 seconds left Dawson Garcia hit a layup for Minnesota to cut Butler’s lead to 72-71. All Butler had to do from there was hang onto the ball. They didn’t.
Davis turned the ball over with 13 seconds left forcing Butler to foul Elijah Hawkins who corralled the turnover. With Minnesota in the bonus, it guarantees Hawkins two free throws. He made both giving Minnesota the 73-72 lead. Telfort would miss a shot at the buzzer on the other end, ending Butler’s season.
‘We were running in place, but we weren’t going anywhere,” Matta said of the game. “That’s how we started the game tonight. You ever seen those people jogging in place at a stoplight because they don’t want to stop? That’s going of how we were. We weren’t going.”
The Bulldogs finish the 2023-24 campaign 18-15, an improvement over last year’s team which was Matt’s first season back as head coach of Butler since his first run with the school in the early 2000s.
Minnesota will take on the winner of tonight’s Indiana State-SMU game in Terre Haute.
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