BUWB Opening Game

I was lucky enough to attend Butler Women’s Basketball’s season opener on Wednesday night, November 9th. This was my first women’s basketball game here at BU, and I think a majority of the crowd could have said the same themselves. We went pretty early to check out warmups and to get an idea of what our team make-up was, and I really enjoyed seeing their new hype video playing on the jumbotron. The seats filled in quite a bit as play started too, and Butler Blue IV was in attendance. In my eyes, the first half was still a bit of a warmup for the girls, as Chicago State came out strong shooting and kept it close throughout the half. However, I could tell pretty early on that #34, Anna Mortag, came into the game with a hot hand. She went on to have a career high game with 16 points total and went 8-for-8 at the free throw line. Another key factor of the game that was evident in the first half was turnovers. Butler paired a great defensive stand with strong rebounding efforts throughout the game, contributing to a final stat of 19 forced turnovers and outrebounding the Cougars 42-30. I’m sure first year head coach Austin Parkinson made this defensive dominance known during his half time speech, as the only thing missing was their finishing. The girls definitely responded, coming out of the half with a new fuel to their fire, outscoring the Cougars 28-14 in the third quarter and 25-16 in the fourth. Free throws helped with these high scores significantly, as Chicago State started to get chippy, but not enough to frazzle the Dawgs at the line. The final score ended up being 84-57, but I can assume that Coach Parkinson was happy with how his girls responded at the half, giving they only lead by four going into the break. Plus, he was able to see the true depth of his bench, as the Butler bench outscored the Cougar’s bench 45-20. Some of these bench minutes even came from our own classmate, Madison!