Massachusetts-Butler Line

This line has me stumped. Up until a week ago Butler was universally ranked a top 25 team in the nation and in contention to land the A10 Regular Season Conference title. At the back end of January the Bulldogs were ranked 9^th.

However a home loss to Saint Louis and a blow out in Richmond against VCU put pay to both the title and their ranking.

Yet a week surely doesn’t represent the quality of a team, yet in a college sports world obsessed with recency Butler have become yesterday’s news and will start 2 point underdogs when they visit Massachusetts. They should be 3-4 point favourites.

By no stretch of the imagination does Massachusetts represent a powerhouse outfit. They haven’t participated in the National Tournament in 14 years while their body of work this year would indicate that’s not about to change.

In Butler’s high profiled defeats last week they met two of the nations fiercest and locked in defences. In Massachusetts they’ll be taking on the countries’ 295^th ranked unit who has been shipping on average 72 points per game.

I’m not so comfortable with the concept of ‘must win’ games though this one looms as pretty damn important one for Butler who in most measures is a far better team than the Minuteman.

A win here would get their campaign back on track and a potential first round bye for the A-10 tournament. Needless to say a loss would spark some pretty serious discussion about what’s going on with Brad Stevens’ team.

Butler should not be underdogs in this game.