These two teams both spent their fair share of time during the regular season peppering the various Top 20 and Top 25 lists around the state. Butler first began raising eyebrows when they gave Frederick Douglass all they could handle in the KOB back on December 19th. Douglass escaped with a 3-point win, but the Bears had put the state on notice that they were not going to have a quiet season this year. Butler's biggest statement of the season came back on January 20th when they hung an 81-69 loss on Male.

Jeffersontown, who had a slightly tougher regular season schedule than Butler, has some additional losses to show for it. The Chargers stepped up and scheduled games against Bryan Station, Ballard, Male, St. Xavier, and North Oldham (in addition to duplicate games played against St. X and North Oldham in the LIT), but those games count for 5 of Jeffersontown's 8 losses this season. They did score notable wins on January 9th when they beat Male 63-62, and they also knocked off North Oldham in the LIT with a commanding 74-49 win on January 14th.

One notable from both teams' recent schedules was Jeffersontown's 55-54 loss to WEB DuBois a week and a half ago in the 24th District Finals. The Chargers had previously beaten the Lions 75-60 on February 5th. On the other side of the coin, Butler has beaten WEB DuBois three times this year, with a 67-66 win on January 11th in the LIT, a 68-56 win on February 7th, and then final win this past Saturday when they beat the Lions 62-56 in the 6th Region Semifinals.

This definitely has the potential to be a close and competitive game when these two strong Jefferson County squads face off for the first time of the season, in what will be the final game of the season for one of them.

What are your predictions?

 

I like Butler in this one.

1 hour ago, 4 Quarters said:

I like Butler in this one.

Jeffersontown has knocked Butler out of the region four times in the last six years. I think I like Butler here but it seems really hard to eliminated J-town in the postseason.

Butler shoots it a little bit better than Jtown

Give me the Bears in a tight one.

Bump.

Butler leads 38-34 with :12 seconds to play.

 

26 minutes ago, Tigerpride94 said:

 

Pretty intense final minute in this one. Tied up at 55, Butler possession....the Bears turned over on the Chargers' end of the court and then stole the ball right back with about 50 seconds left. They fed it immediately to Adrian Wilder who hit a 3 to put Butler up 38-35 with 46.2 seconds remaining.

Jeffersontown took the ball back down the court, missed a step-through layup and had their put-back attempt blocked.

Butler got the ball back and ended up at the charity stripe with 11 seconds remaining and missed both free throws.

Jeffersontown had a chance to send it to overtime, inbounding it down 3 points with 10.1 seconds left, but their three-point shot missed the mark and Butler won it.

Both teams are so good defensively that you knew this would be low scoring and tight but I don’t think anyone thought it would be this!

When that ball ended up in Wilder’s hands you just knew he would make it. JTown didn’t give him much space all night.

JTown made ZERO 3 point shots. Unheard of in this day and age.