Recovering from a loss

After Monday night's first conference loss to UW-Green Bay, Butler bounced back tonight with a 66-61 win over Detroit. Both of these games were away, and they were both very close throughout the entire game. In my own personal opinion, I would say that the Bulldogs usually rebound with more stamina and vengeance after a loss, but then again, this may be true for most basketball teams.

During Monday night's game, the Bulldogs sort of ran into a wall of perfect free throw shooting. Green Bay's leading scorer, Ryan Tillema had 21 point total, 10 of which were free throws. However, during tonight's game, one of the sports announcers made the comment that Gordon Hayward scores most of his points at away games. I believe they said he averages about 16 points per game when they are away. As evidence to support their theory, he scored 22 points in Monday night's game and in tonight's game.

In the league standings, their win tonight against Detroit kept them a game ahead of Green Bay. Their next game is against Wright State...at Wright State. Now, the past two years, I have made the roughly 2-3 hour trip to Dayton, OH. They have also lost the last three games they played at the Nutter Center. Both of the past two year's away games there, and the Horizon League Championship game that was played there in 2007. There is just something about the Nutter Center that is a curse. So in summary, Saturday night's game is going to be huge!

Rankings:
ESPN/AP Poll - 11 in the country
RPI Rating - #9
Collegeinsider.com Mid-Major Top 25 - #1
Bracketology (updated Feb. 2) - #4 seed in Portland

Before Saturday's game, the women's team is playing Wright State at home. It is also going to be playing on ESPNU. They lost their past two games, both away and both against University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee and Green Bay). Until their first loss to UW-Green Bay, they were undefeated in their conference. UW-Green Bay is the only undefeated team in the conference now.

In other news: University of Tennessee Women's basketball coach Pat Summitt won her 1,000th game tonight against Georgia. She is the first coach of both men's and women's D-1 basketball, to reach this milestone. To read more about it, click here.