THE BUTLER DID IT
October 02, 2007 04:06 PM | General
October 12, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Despite growing up in the heart of Big East basketball country in Newark, N.J., West Virginia University sophomore forward Da’Sean Butler says that he really wasn’t that big on the Big East.
 |
||
| Da'Sean Butler earned Big East all-rookie team honors in 2007 after averaging 10.1 points and 3.5 rebounds per game.
Allison Toffle photo |
“I just followed basketball in general,” he said. “I never really got to start watching college basketball until my sophomore year. You kind of get bored watching the NBA because the game is getting slower and slower. After a while I started watching college basketball and I was like, ‘This is fun.’ I’m going to have to play sooner or later. As I was getting closer to college it became even more exciting.”
Butler had many college options after an outstanding high school career at New Jersey powerhouse Bloomfield Tech, but coaching changes at nearby Seton Hall and Rutgers eventually pushed Butler toward West Virginia.
“It was kind of difficult because they were going through a coaching change and I didn’t know who the coach was going to be,” Butler said of the situation at Seton Hall.
Butler says Rutgers was a different circumstance entirely.
“For whatever reason I had a scholarship and the new coach came and it wasn’t there,” Butler said. “I was like, ‘OK, that’s all right.’ It’s a lot more fun to go away from home anyway.”
In the meantime, Butler had grown close to former West Virginia coach John Beilein and became convinced that Beilein’s system was best suited for his playing style. Beilein immediately took a liking to Butler and made him the team’s top sub off the bench last year.
Butler averaged 10.1 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, shooting 48 percent from the floor in 23.3 minutes of action. He scored 20 points in West Virginia’s NIT championship victory over Clemson and had a season-high 21 at Seton Hall on his return trip home on Feb. 3.
Butler was expecting to do even bigger things this season with another year of Beilein’s offense under his belt. And when Beilein decided to leave for Michigan last April it probably hit Butler the hardest.
“I was really hurt. Honestly when he recruited me I didn’t know anything about the offense but I just trusted him based on him,” Butler said. “I didn’t know any of the team or anybody. Everything else came later. I watched the games and the offense was good but when I first met him I trusted him and he’s the reason why I wanted to come (to West Virginia).”
Butler says his relationship with Beilein remains strong.
“When he said he was leaving I was like, ‘OK, I’m stranded.’ Even though I developed a great relationship with everybody I knew him first before I knew anybody else,” Butler said. “I felt like I was left here by myself and I didn’t know what to do.
“It kind of hit me hard and I thought about a whole bunch of things,” Butler added. “It was such a good offense and how everything worked and how we played so well as a team and you kind of think, OK, we did that for a whole year and now we get a new coach and it’s going to be so hard to adjust from what we’ve been doing.”
Butler admits he had a million things going through his mind when Beilein left and he says it was helpful that West Virginia was able to land such a good coach in Bob Huggins so quickly.
“You kind of get nervous because you don’t want to get the wrong coach,” Butler said. “Even though you know the University is going to hire the best coach that they can you don’t want them to just pick somebody and you’re like, ‘Who in the heck is this person?’
“When I heard the name and then I heard all of the things he’s done – I have a whole bunch of friends that played for him when he was at Cincinnati – and even though they told me some crazy stories, he got them where they needed to be. And they are all good men because of him.”
The team has yet to have a preseason practice and Huggins has already made a big impression on the players, according to Butler.
“When you hear the name you just think winner and that’s what he is – a winner,” Butler said. “You want to play for a winner by any means you do whatever he asks you to do. Play as hard as you can.”
Butler said he was most surprised by how soft-spoken and laid back Huggins is off the court.
“I had never talked to him before so you don’t know what to expect and you hear all of these stories and you’re like, ‘OK, is he a real tough guy?’ You walk in and you see him and he’s like, ‘Hey brother, come here.’ You’re caught off guard regardless,” Butler said. “I didn’t think he was going to be welcoming like he is now. I thought he was going to be more like a tough, hard-headed coach but he’s far what I thought he was.”
That doesn’t mean Huggins’ practices won’t be tough and demanding. Butler has already gotten a preview of what is in store for the team this fall during summer conditioning and preseason workouts.
“We’ve been here all summer. If our old coaching staff was here we probably wouldn’t have been here like the whole summer,” Butler said. “It would probably have been half the summer and we would have come back during the second part of the summer to play and go to summer school. We’ve been working hard and we’ve continued that work ethic into September getting ready for practices.”
| “He tells us the other teams in the Big East know as far as his reputation how he wants us to play so they’re either not going to mess with us or they’re going to come right at us. We’ve just got to come prepared to play the way he wants us to play.” -- Da'Sean Butler |
|
Butler has added 16 pounds to his 6-foot-7-inch frame and is now up to 228 pounds. He believes that added weight and muscle will help transform him into the physical player Huggins is looking for in the paint.
“If you’ve got it in you you’re just going to do it. But then of course there are going to be people that are blatantly stronger than you are. All of us have it in us but we weren’t as strong as we are now,” Butler said. “Now everybody is strong enough. Joe Alexander has gotten huge.”
Some are making a big deal about the difficulty the players may have transitioning from Beilein’s style to Huggins’ style. Butler doesn’t think it will be an issue at all.
“It’s not that bad of a transition and as far as what everybody else thinks … everybody didn’t think we were going to win half the games that we won last year and we won them,” Butler said. “As far as experts saying we’re going to win games or not win games I don’t even take it seriously because I know whenever you get on the court it’s the team that plays the hardest that wins games.”
Additionally, Butler believes the team is a little more athletic than others might suspect.
“Nobody knows the people that we have on our team because we were stuck into the offense last year. I can honestly say our offense takes away athleticism and you couldn’t really see what most people can do as far playing offense and defense,” Butler said. “It was just the way things were set up and the certain things that we did.”
What Huggins plans to put on the floor is the toughest, nastiest defensive team in the Big East. Butler said the coach has already told the team what to expect this year.
“He tells us the other teams in the Big East know as far as his reputation how he wants us to play so they’re either not going to mess with us or they’re going to come right at us,” Butler said. “We’ve just got to come prepared to play the way he wants us to play.”
RETURN TO MAIN
