Iowa State starts off their 2023-24 basketball season at home Monday as they welcome in the Butler Bulldogs, who are also starting off their season with this game.
Butler is coming off of an underwhelming season, as they went 11-19 overall, and 6-14 in the Big East and they’ll be looking to start this season off in the right direction.
The Bulldogs, like the Cyclones, also hosted an exhibition game and they ended up clobbering Franklin State by a score of 108-41.
Meanwhile for Iowa State, they got the job done in their exhibition game against Truman State as they took the win by a score of 88-68. It might not have been as empathic as a win that Butler got, but it still got the job done at the end of the day.
Forward Addy Brown thought that the team played pretty well in that game, but there was still room for improvement as they attempted to keep up their success towards the start of the season.
“I think we did pretty good,” Brown said. “There’s still a lot of things to work on, especially with a new starting lineup, so we just gotta work with what we got and prepare for the next game.”
Newly promoted point guard Arianna Jackson said even though the win felt good, she felt like the team could’ve done more than what they did in the exhibition game versus Truman State.
“I would definitely say just getting to our right places. We could’ve had a lot of opportunities if we were in our right places during the game, so that is crucial for us to clean up heading into the season,” Jackson said.
Just like Iowa State, Butler welcomed in some fresh faces to their program for their upcoming season, and they’ll be looking forward to starting it off on the right foot.
Head coach Bill Fennelly knows that this game won’t be an easy one, despite Butler having a similar team to his, so he’s getting his team ready to go out and get a win to start out their season.
“Butler is a good team. They’re very well-coached and added some really good pieces over the offseason. So I think it’ll be a really challenging opener, but I think our kids are excited about the opportunity,” Fennelly said.
Iowa State will take on Butler at 11 a.m. Monday at Hilton Coliseum and the game will also be streamed on ESPN+.
