The Butler Bulldogs will be home for the holidays to greet the Berry Cardinal at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Butler has three straight victories, Berry has seven straight losses), but none of that matters once you're on the field.
Last Friday, Butler narrowly escaped with a victory as the team sidled past East Mecklenburg 48-45. Despite the win, that was the fewest points Butler has scored all year.
Tyler Showalter continued his habit of posting crazy stat lines, scoring 21 points along with seven rebounds. The contest was his eighth in a row with at least ten points. The team also got some help courtesy of Terrance Badio, who scored nine points.
Meanwhile, Berry pushed their score all the way to 69 on Friday, but even that wasn't enough to win. They took a 75-69 hit to the loss column at the hands of Ardrey Kell. Despite running the score up even higher than they did on Tuesday (59), Berry still had to take the loss.
The victory got Butler back to even at 4-4. As for Berry, their defeat was their sixth straight on the road dating back to last season, which bumped their record down to 1-8.
Butler was able to grind out a solid victory over Berry when the teams last played back in January, winning 68-61. Will Butler repeat their success, or does Berry have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.