Bryce Butler has proven over the years that he’s built for big moments on the basketball court. Whether it’s finding ways to score, creating offense off the ball or setting up teammates, the Latrobe product is an all-around talent.
Which makes the college graduate an ideal choice for the FIBA 3-on-3 Americas Nations League 2024, which will be held from July 22 to 28 in Mexico City.
He will play for the U23 team.
Butler, a former West Liberty standout who played one year at the College of Charleston, is no newcomer to 3×3 basketball. He competed in the 2022 FIBA games.
The Coastal Athletic Association’s Sixth Man of the Year last season – in his fifth collegiate season as a graduate student – Butler will be joined in Mexico City by Finley Bizjack (Butler University), Dalen Davis (Princeton), Jacob Harvey (Trinity University), Boden Kapke (Butler University) and Caden Pierce (Princeton).
“I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to represent my country while playing the game I love,” Butler said in a press release. “Thank you to USA Basketball for giving me the chance to compete at a high level.”
Butler averaged 8.3 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 20.6 minutes as a backup for Charleston.
The Nations League, now in its seventh year, features 13 conferences with teams from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. For the first time, the league will serve as a qualifier for the FIBA 3×3 U23 World Cup, which will be held September 11-15 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
“Flexible” Griffins
Seton Hill football, along with sixth-year defensive coordinator Kevin May and his system, was profiled by ESPN.com.
An article by journalist David Hale analyzes the “Flex” defense used by the Griffins, calling it “perhaps the most dynamic, aggressive and confusing system used by any team in the country.”
May said he learned the defensive alignment at Wyoming from longtime coach David Brown in the early 2010s. As the story goes, “It’s complex, it’s confusing to offenses and, as Brown and other creators of the system have often chided, it shouldn’t be changed.”
“I was always told,” May said in the article, “never to touch Grandma’s recipe.”
The Flex is basically meant to hide the defensive front with one or no linemen. The box is always flooded with defenders.
It focuses on man coverage.
May added to the basic look, studying the strategy in depth and giving it a non-traditional look, as the play unfolds.
Griffins coach Dan Day said in the article: “The smartest guys we have in the room have been fighting this for four years … and they still say, ‘I don’t know what they’re doing.'”
Day added: “I’m amazed that people don’t want to run this election. If you ran this election in Alabama, with the best of the best, I don’t know how you could stop it.”
Hale called the Flex used by Seton Hill “like the triple option, but for defense: a ready-made scheme that virtually anyone could use successfully, but is so outside the norm that other teams have a hard time preparing for it.”
Last season, Seton Hill was fifth in NCAA Division II in sacks and tackles for loss.
The Griffins have produced the last two Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Western Division Defensive Players of the Year: Dioh Desuah and Jaylen McDuffie.
Redshirt junior Quinton Posey is also featured in the in-depth article.
Did you know?
Longtime St. Vincent women’s volleyball coach Sue Hozak is among the top Division III coaches in the country.
According to D3 Data, Hozak ranks sixth among active coaches nationally in wins with 678.
Hozak, who has been with the Bearcats since the girls program began in 1985, played on three PIAA championship teams at Norwin and was also a standout at Waynesburg.
Under his leadership, Saint Vincent won back-to-back ECAC Division II championships (2006, 2007) and reached the ECAC Division III semifinals in 2009 and the finals in 2010.
Bill Beckner Jr. is a TribLive reporter covering local sports in Westmoreland County. He can be reached at bbeckner@triblive.com.
