Jalen Jackson

And Marcus Burton had two, at least two moments like this.

And again, he defended who seems to be Butler's best guard in Jalen Jackson very, very well.

He was sticking right by him.

Uh, he had a height disadvantage, Mart- Burton did, but he still was getting good shot contests up.

Who is still available? I'm going to see if Jalen was available.

Jalen Jackson? Yeah.

I was contemplating Jalen in the fourth round.

I love Mason Bigman and I think he's going to be interesting in Utah.

I was out at Hinkle Fieldhouse to interview Ronald Norred.

The one thing I talked to him about was, you know, it's so important you bring back your point guard in Jalen Jackson.

You bring back your big man in Drayton Jones.

So you start there, your anchors.

So let's dive in with my projected order finish for the Big East.

At number 11 in my projected order finish for the Big East, I'm going to be going with Butler.

For Butler, I love the fact that they bring in Ronald Norred as their new coach and for butler they do bring back jalen jackson a guy who he was really good over at fort wayne a few seasons ago but just dealt with so much injury last season they're going to be really banking on guys that i don't know if they're able to play at this level drayden jones was able to give the team a bit of something something down low last year six half points he was able to pull in their darn near five rebounds per game so that's relatively solid but that said you're relying upon a lot of unknowns and just with butler i don't necessarily think that this is going to be a bad team but When you're lying upon Simon Calderon, who was over at Kansas last year, he really did not see the floor for them at 6'10", or 6'8", I should say.

And you've got so many of these teams, like Providence, like Xavier, like Marquette, that hit the transfer portal.

but if he's just got a knack for this, then that's the foundation of it going better in year one than, than people expect.

And I think getting Jalen Jackson back is a bigger deal than, than people might think.

That was a good Butler team that beat Virginia.

Virginia, one of their six losses last year was to a healthy Butler team on a neutral court, and, um-

they were completely different before he went down.

But there's a ton of new names, and on most nights against high major opponents they're going to have a, a talent deficiency against whoever they're playing.

Jalen Jackson will be an important piece there.

Um, yeah, we'll see.

Not allowed.

I, I think number one is, is, uh, Jalen Jackson-

Okay

... um, our returning point guard.

This is year zero for Ronald Norend.

So you have Jalen Jackson back, which is great.

You have Drayton Jones back, who we mentioned was a really good rebounder, if nothing else.

Uh, that might be about it.

Like, that is because they're not very talented.

If there is another possession in the world where your starting point guard, who is the guy you are paying the most on this roster, Jalen Jackson, is in the back court complaining for a foul call, doing this to the ref while his man goes down and scores a basket, and he is not pulled the second that happens, I'm going to go, I can't cuss, ape you know what.

I'm going to lose my ever-loving mind, and it might get me fired from my job.

That can't happen.

It drove me insane.

He, Jalen Jackson is the reason Butler lost the SMU game, which ended up pretty much being the beginning of the end for their season.

He was in the back court crying for three, four possessions at a time while Boopy Miller was going down and scoring.

It was unfathomable.

On the player's side, you bring back a couple of really important pieces from last year's team.

Jalen Jackson obviously got hurt, missed a large portion of the season, but starting point guard, Drayton Jones started all 32 games for the Bulldogs last season.

So building around those two cornerstones, how easy was it first to retain them? And then two, once you got them, how did you want to build around them? Yeah, easy to retain.

There was so much going on.