Senior center Yohan Traore had a season-high 21 points on senior day. Photo by Andrew Buckley.
DAVID JACOBS | MANAGING EDITOR | drjacobs@butler.edu
The men’s basketball team celebrated its three seniors — graduate forward Michael Ajayi, graduate guard Yame Butler and center Yohan Traore — on Feb. 21 in stressful fashion, outlasting Xavier 80-75.
Ajayi started his celebratory day off strong, scoring Butler’s first seven points en route to 24 on the day. Such an aggressive start from the transfer quickly became contagious, as the Dawgs played one of their most defensively sound and offensively efficient halves of basketball while pouring in 26 points in the paint behind Ajayi’s lead.
“I always let the game come to me,” Ajayi said. “Today, I got hot, and I congratulate my team for finding me. I always want to be aggressive [and] put the pressure on [the] defense, and that’s what I did.”
As the half matured, Traore caught the senior day hot hand to the tune of 11 points on a perfect 7-of-7 from the charity stripe to help grow as large as a 21-point first half lead and a 47-28 halftime advantage.
Coming out of the locker room, Xavier found its footing with several mini-runs and an overall 21-10 advantage to start the second period. With “let’s go, X” chants starting to rain onto the court from the upper levels of Hinkle, Traore and Ajayi continued their dominant nights with a slurry of dunks to bring the momentum back in favor of Butler.
Xavier was able to cut its deficit to as small as three points behind a 7-of-15 barrage from beyond the arc in the second half, but despite making just one field goal in the last seven minutes of game time, the Dawgs prevailed thanks to timely free throws down the stretch.
“We wanted to execute the game plan, and that’s what we did,” Ajayi said.
Despite a season-best 21 points from Traore and the dominant presence from Ajayi, the winning plays down the stretch came from Jamie Kaiser Jr.. The redshirt-sophomore forward took just five attempts on the day, but his lone three-pointer with 6:05 left in the game was the last made field goal of the game for the Dawgs. Add in eight rebounds, a steal and a game-saving loose-ball retrieval, and Butler may have suffered a full 21-point collapse without the effort.
“Jamie is a winner,” head coach Thad Matta said. “I challenged him to rebound the ball tonight, [and] he did a great job with that. I love Jamie, and he does his job. Today he was huge for us.”
With consecutive wins under their belt after the six-game skid, the Dawgs aim to heal up with a few days’ rest before hitting the road against Villanova on Feb. 25.
“[This season] is not the way we designed it,” Matta said. “It’s not the way we thought it was going to go; nobody cares. We just [have to] keep trying to figure things out. We got another quick turnaround to get ready to go for Villanova.”
