Big East Roundup: Prove-it Year for Butler Head Coach Thad Matta

This is one in a series of stories covering roster changes around the Big East heading into the 2025-26 college basketball season.

After finishing with an uninspiring 15-20 (8-14 Big East) record in their third season under head coach and university alumnus Thad Matta, the Butler Bulldogs needed to bring in ten new faces in order to flesh out their roster ahead of the 2025-26 campaign.

The Bulldogs staff put together the No. 27 recruiting class per 247Sports, with four-stars Azavier Robinson and legacy commit Jack McCaffery — brother of Patrick McCaffery, son of longtime Iowa and current Penn head coach Fran McCaffery — serving as the headliners.

Robinson, a 6-foot-1, 180 pound point guard, snuck inside the ESPN Top 100 in the final spot after putting up 18.4 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game in his senior season and receives praise for his motor, length and athleticism. McCaffery, a 6-foot-8, 200 pound small forward, checks in at No. 93 in the Top 100 and averaged 21.2 points, 7.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.3 blocks per game last season. Growing up around the game with his father and brother to learn from, he could blossom into another mainstay at the Hinkle Fieldhouse.

Jackson Keith is a bulky small forward at 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds: barring a late growth spurt, he’ll almost certainly fit in better at the 2. A First-Team All-State pick in North Carolina, Keith dominated last season to the tune of 24.4 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. Efeosa Oliogu-Elabor, a 6-foot-5, 222 pound small forward from Canada who put up 12.9 pounds, 3.4 rebounds and 2.6 assists in international play at the FIBA U19 Men’s Basketball World Cup this summer. 6-foot-7 Bryson Cardinal nearly averaged a double-double with 19.1 points and 9.4 rebounds per game down low.

Incoming Transfers

Butler also needed to turn to the portal to flesh out their roster after losing seven of their top eight scorers last season to graduation (Jahmyl Telfort, Pierre Brooks II, Patrick McCaffery and Andre Screen) or transfers (Kolby King, Augusto Cassiá, Boden Kapke).

The Bulldogs’ transfer class ranks No. 48 according to 247Sports. Jalen Jackson of Purdue Fort Wayne and Michael Ajayi of Gonzaga both rank as four-star transfers, while SMU’s Yohan Traore picked up a five-star ranking out of high school.

Jackson, a junior point guard who stands 6-foot-2 and weighs 200 pounds, averaged 19.2 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists last season; Ajayi, a 6-foot-7, 220 pound guard came off the bench for Gonzaga to the tune of 6.5 points and 5.4 rebounds in 18.9 minutes per night. That marked a significant drop in playing time for the senior, who started during the 2023-24 season, but his height makes him an intriguing piece along the perimeter.

Traore started at UC Santa Barbara in 2023-24, averaging 28.8 minutes and 14.5 points per game, but struggled with the jump to a major conference at SMU last season. The talent is there for the 6-foot-11 forward, and he’s also shown results: he’s not the typical former five-star to reclamation project, but the Bulldogs still need to help him unlock his ceiling.

Senior guard Yame Butler (6-foot-5, 210 pounds), formerly of Drexel, averaged 13.6 points for the Dragons, and Drayton Jones, a 6-foot-10 junior, scored 13 points in 23.6 minutes per game in his second season with South Carolina State. 

Returning Bulldogs

Of course, Butler also managed to bring back some familiar faces. Junior Finley Bizjack, the Bulldogs’ fourth-leading scorer in 2024-25, provides some much needed continuity. The 6-foot-4, 190 pound guard scored 10.3 points per game last season. Each of the other three returning players played sparingly. 

Ethan McComb, a former walk-on who earned an athletic scholarship this offseason, played seven minutes across five games; Evan Haywood, a 6-foot-4, 195 pound sophomore, played 126 minutes across 23 games as a true freshman last year and could see a bigger role as he continues to adjust to Division I, while wing Jamie Kaiser Jr., a redshirt sophomore who began his career at Maryland, took a medical redshirt last season.

All in all, Butler had plenty of offense during the 2024-25 season, with KenPom rating their offensive efficiency as the 38th-best in college basketball despite the 147th-fastest tempo, a measured style (though not as extreme) as that adopted by Villanova. However, the Bulldogs’ 169th-ranked defense proved their undoing. 

Butler hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2018, and with three consecutive sub-.500 finishes in conference play, Matta’s seat will start to blaze if he doesn’t show marked improvement in year four.