Published: November 23, 2009 01:31 am      

HERTZEL COLUMN - Butler a better player than most realize

MORGANTOWN — Bob Huggins was talking to his West Virginia University basketball team the other day at practice and he had a point that had to get across.

“It’s getting increasingly hard for Da’Sean (Butler) to have to bring the ball up the court, throw it to himself, score, rebound his misses and go down and guard the other team’s best guy,” Huggins said. “It would be nice if someone would step in and help a little bit.”

The point is that there is a tremendous burden on Butler, especially with Devin Ebanks out of the lineup due to whatever “personal issue” is involved.

If the Mountaineers are to be the team they are expected to be, and a preseason ranking of No. 8 in America gives you an idea of just how lofty the expectations are, then he is going to need some big-time help from the supporting cast that includes Kevin Jones and Truck Bryant and Wellington Smith and John Flowers and the freshmen and junior college scoring sensation Casey Mitchell.

Sometimes we get so close to a team or a player that we ourselves don’t realize just how good he really is and that has happened with Butler, perhaps because he does so much and has done it for so long that we come to take it for granted.

Score? Yeah. Bring the ball up court? Certainly. Rebound? Why not. Play defense? Unnoticed, but not unappreciated.

Butler may not be the perfect player, but he is a whole lot more than anyone realizes.

Now it’s true that Butler was West Virginia’s leading scorer with a 17.1 average last year. But I defy anyone to tell me that they knew it was a better scoring average than Joe Alexander had the previous year when he led the Mountaineers and became a lottery NBA draft pick, averaging 16.9 points a game.

It’s true, too, that Butler scored 43 points in a single game last year, which was the most in the Coliseum since Wil Robinson scored 45 against Penn State in 1971. Think about that. It was the most points in a home game by a WVU player in virtually the entire decades of the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.

Now Jack Bogaczyk of the Charleston Daily Mail informs us that Butler entered the 2009-10 season, his final year, with one of the most prolific opening game performances in the school history, scoring 26 points against Loyola of Maryland.

It was more points than either Hot Rod Hundley or Jerry West scored in their first games as seniors, Hundley having 23 and West 21, and the most since Levi Phillips opened the that same 1971 season as Wil Robinson’s record performance with 29 points against East Carolina in a 103-86 victory.

Bogaczyk projects that if Butler averages the 17.1 points a game he averaged last year, he will finish with about 2,100 career points, which is right there in the neighborhoods occupied by Hundley (2,180) and West, (2,309), but they, of course, played only three years.

All of this tells you that you are seeing something very special with Butler, who will be one of the rare players to have averaged double figures all four seasons of his career, having broken in at 10.1, moved up to 12.9 and then 17.1.

Now for the hard part to imagine. He has not been able to reach his maximum potential as a scorer.

“Da’s been great,” said Huggins, who likes to use nicknames like “Da’” for Butler and “Pep” for Dalton Pepper. “It’s harder than everyone thinks to play all the different roles he’s been asked to play, but he’s done it willingly and done it well.”

Butler not only scores, but averages better than five rebounds a game for his career.

And again, because he does so many things and has so many responsibilities, his rebounding isn’t maximized either.

“If he didn’t have those other things to do I think he’d be fresher,” Huggins admitted. “Undoubtedly, he’d rebound the ball better. He was our best offensive rebounder two years ago but because of all the other things he has to do he hasn’t rebounded quite as well.

“But that’s to be expected,” Huggins admitted.

Butler understands the situation, especially without Ebanks, and knows that there are a number of times during the game that he finds himself at the point, a position that Ebanks could also share in if he were around.

Scoring, Butler knows, will come.

“I have a knack,” he says almost sheepishly, with a sly smile. “I can do a lot of things well. I’m not just a shooter or a scorer or a rebounder. I take pride in being able to do a lot of other things.”

By taking such a load on his own shoulders, he eases the burden on his teammates, especially in this time when they have to cover up for some personnel shortages.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.