Opponent: Furman
Specifics: Saturday, November 18  |  2 p.m. ET  |  Hinkle Fieldhouse  |  Indianapolis, Ind.
TV: FS2  |  Steve Physioc & Nick Bahe
Radio: 93.1 FM & the TuneIn Radio app  |  Mark Minner (play-by-play) & Nick Gardner (analyst)
Follow Along: @ButlerMBB
Tickets:  Still Available - purchase

Full Notes (PDF - additional information included)

This is the first meeting between Butler and Furman as men's basketball opponents. The Paladins won 23 games a year ago, a share of the Southern Conference regular season title, and played in the CIT.
 
QUICK HITS:
• Furman's Director of Recruiting is Tyler Lewis, a name familiar to Butler fans.
• Lewis, who played two seasons at Butler after transferring from NC State, was second in the nation with a 4.15 assist/turnover ratio last season.
• Butler has won 37 consecutive home games against non-conference opponents. The streak dates back to a loss to Pittsburgh in the 2012 College Basketball Invitational (CBI).
• Butler's most recent match-ups with the Southern Conference came in 2015-16, posting home wins over The Citadel and VMI.
• Saturday's game is Butler's fourth in nine days to open the season. The team next heads to Portland, Ore., for the PK80 event, which features three games in four days.
 
BREAKOUT PERFORMANCE: Sean McDermott had 17 points Wednesday night at Maryland. It was 10 points better than his previous career-high and was his first time leading the Bulldogs in scoring. He went 3-of-7 from behind the arc and made all four of his attempts at the free throw line.
 
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CHARITY: Butler went a perfect 11-of-11 from the free throw line Wednesday at Maryland, following up on a 18-of-21 (86 percent) performance at the stripe against Princeton. Butler is shooting 91 percent (29-32) in those two games after starting the season 12-of-23 (52 percent) against Kennesaw State.
 
YOU WON'T BE NEEDING THAT: Butler had 10 steals and forced Maryland into 20 total turnovers in Wednesday's loss in College Park. Kamar Baldwin had three swipes, while Aaron Thompson, Henry Baddley and Tyler Wideman each had two.
 
Baldwin had 59 steals last season, a mark that is eighth on Butler's single-season list. He had seven games of three or more steals last season.
 
TIGHT GRIP: Butler committed only 10 turnovers at Maryland Wednesday, and is averaging 9.3 per game on the young season. Butler averaged only 10.2 turnovers per game in 2016-17. That mark was ninth nationally.
 
FAST START: Senior Kelan Martin earned BIG EAST Player of the Week honors after registering back-to-back 20-point games as Butler won two games over opening weekend. This is the fifth weekly honor for Martin, who also was recognized twice as a junior and twice as a senior.
 
'BOARD' OUT OF HIS MIND: Martin had a career-best 14 rebounds Sunday against Princeton, which contributed to his first double-double of the season and the 11^th of his career. No Bulldog had more than 11 rebounds in a game last season.
 
WELCOME ABOARD: Markeese Hastings, a 6-7 forward from Wyoming, Mich., has signed a national letter of intent to join the Butler men's basketball program beginning with the 2018-19 season. As a junior at Godwin Heights High School, Hastings averaged 14.6 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.8 blocks, and 2.1 assists.

CLIMBING THE CHARTS: Just two games into his senior season, Martin now has 1,356 career points, which is already 20th on Butler's all-time list. His 544 points in 2016-17 were the seventh-best total for a junior in Butler history.
 
WELCOME HOME: LaVall Jordan started his Butler head coaching career in style as his Bulldogs posted an 82-64 win over Kennesaw State in front of a sold-out Hinkle Fieldhouse crowd. Jordan, who helped Butler to conference championships and NCAA Tournament appearances as both a player and an assistant coach, returned to his alma mater as the 24th head coach in men's basketball program history on June 12. The head coach who recruited him to Butler as a student-athlete (Barry Collier) is the Butler's Director of Athletics who hired him to this position over the summer.
 
THE FRESHMAN 15: Newcomer Aaron Thompson posted 15 points on 5-of-6 shooting in Sunday's win over Princeton. He also went 5-of-7 from the free throw. Ten of his points steadied the ship in the first half as Butler's starting backcourt of Kamar Baldwin and Paul Jorgensen were saddled with two fouls.
 
Thompson had a career-best six assists Wednesday at Maryland, one better than the five he had in the season opener against Kennesaw State.
 
ANOTHER HONOR: Kelan Martin has been named to the Wooden Award Watch List. Chosen by a preseason poll of national college basketball experts, the list is comprised of 50 student-athletes who are the early front-runners for college basketball's most prestigious individual honor.
 
'POST'ING BIG NUMBERS: Butler's three post players – Tyler Wideman, Nate Fowler and Joey Brunk – combined to go 13-of-16 from the floor in the season-opening win over Kennesaw State. The trio tallied 28 points as Butler had a 50-16 advantage in points in the paint. Wideman shot .615 last season, which is in the top 10 of Butler's single-season marks. Fowler shot .667 on 99 attempts a season ago (one attempt shy of being the top mark on that single-season list).
 
Butler followed that with a 50-26 points in the paint advantage over Princeton.
 
BIG DAWGS IN BIG MOMENTS: Kelan Martin and Kamar Baldwin combined for 29 of their 35 points in the second half against Princeton, securing the win for the Bulldogs.
 
THAT'S JUST OFFENSIVE: The Bulldogs have shot at least 50 percent in both wins so far this season. The Bulldogs were 12-1 last season when making at least half of their attempts from the field. Butler has also eclipsed 80 points in both of their games this season, something that led to a 12-2 mark last season.
 
QUANTITY AND QUALITY: Butler's two-day turnaround for Princeton is almost the early-season norm for the Bulldogs, who open with four games in nine days. Butler then flies to Portland, Ore., for the exclusive PK80 event honoring Nike's Phil Knight. That tournament features three games in four days. November alone includes match-ups with NCAA Tournament teams Princeton and Maryland, and a highly-regarded Texas team to open PK80, in addition to the remainder of the PK80 field.
 
TOP DAWG: Senior Kelan Martin had team-highs of 20 points and nine rebounds Friday against Kennesaw State. After also leading the team in both categories Sunday against Princeton, Martin now has 23 career games scoring 20 or more points and he has led the Bulldogs in scoring 33 times and in rebounding 34 times (which includes the Maryland game).
 
GRAB AND GO: Butler forced 17 turnovers by Kennesaw State in the opener and converted those into 29 points. Junior Paul Jorgensen, playing in his first game for Butler after transferring from George Washington, tied his career-high with three steals. His 14 points were just two shy of his career-high during his time at GW.
 
'TAPAS' PERFORMANCES: The Bulldogs utilized a four-game foreign tour to Spain to prepare for the 2017-18 campaign. The team went 4-0, playing professional teams in Madrid, Albacete, Valencia, and Barcelona, from August 2-12. The team flew to Spain on coach LaVall Jordan's 50^th day as Butler's head coach. The Bulldogs did extensive sight-seeing throughout the country, literally only touching a basketball during the four games.
 
BEST GUESS: BIG EAST coaches picked Butler to finish eighth in the league's preseason poll, which was released at BIG EAST Media Day Oct. 18. The Bulldogs finished second in the league standings a season ago after being picked sixth in the preseason poll.

HONORS PILING UP: Senior Kelan Martin earned one of the spots on the preseason All-BIG EAST first team after averaging 16.0 points and 5.8 rebounds per game a season ago. Martin has also been named to preseason watch lists for three prominent awards: the Naismith Trophy (national player of the year presented by the Atlanta Tipoff Club), the Lute Olson Award (national player of the year who has played college basketball for two or more seasons, presented by CollegeInsider.com), and the 2018 Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Award. 

He has been voted an All-BIG EAST second team performer by the conference's head coaches following each of the past two seasons.