Bulldogs to get head start with Australian exhibitions

New Butler head coach Brandon Miller is getting a chance to do something that almost no other coach in college basketball gets to do with his team before the school year starts. Miller and the Bulldogs have been practicing away since July 21st in preparing for their team's trip to Australia.

The Bulldog players and coaching staff left the Indianapolis International Airport for an 18-hour flight to Sydney, Australia, where they will get the opportunity to spend 11 days on Aussie soil.

Their first week, Butler will play four different exhibition contests in five days between August 6 and 11th.

Butler opens play against the Norths Bears Invitational Team in Sydney on Tuesday, August 6th at 4 p.m. After a day off, they'll continue the exhibition tour in Sydney with a game versus the Sydney Kings at 7 p.m. on Thursday, August 8th.

For the remaining two exhibition matchups, they'll be traveling to a couple other cities to play. On, Saturday, August 10th, the Australian Boomers will play host to Butler in Canberra. This game with the Australian Boomers will be a game that is not open or available to the public. For the fourth and final game on the Australian trip exhibition slate, the Bulldogs will head to Cairns to face Cairns Taipans at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 11.

All 16 members of the 2013-14 Butler Bulldog men's basketball team are making the trip to Australia. Khyle Marshall, Alex Barlow and Roosevelt Jones are the three starters that return from last season's 27-9 squad that advanced to the NCAA Tournament's third-round, but were ousted by Marquette, 74-72.

That trio is joined by experienced returning letter winners Kellen Dunham, Kameron Woods and Erik Fromm, along with Jackson Aldridge, Andrew Smeathers, Devontae Morgan and Elliot Kampen,

Coach Miller has quite the recruiting class that gets to start their collegiate careers in grand fashion with this Australian trip.  The freshman class of Michael Volovic, Steven Bennett, Elijah Brown, Rene Castro, Nolan Berry and Andrew Chrabascz are going to be exposed to opponents like they've never faced before.

With the amount of experience coming back for Butler, it's going to be very interesting to see how these four exhibitions turn out and what kind of lineups Brandon Miller uses against the different Aussie teams.

A trip like this for a team can only turn into something good in the long run. For Butler, it's going to be all about how this version of Butler basketball can and will build team chemistry and bond together. Spending 11 days in a foreign land with only their teammates and coaches is going to be a tremendous way to mesh this group in the best way possible, in hopes that it will produce big-time results on the court.

Butler hasn't made a trip overseas since the summer of 2009. That summer, the Bulldogs made a similar trip to Italy. The results of that exhibition trip now speaks volumes of what can become of this kind of team adventure. As history unveiled itself, the 2009-10 season proved to become something that was nothing short of special in Butler basketball history. Going 18-0 in Horizon League play and compiling an astounding overall record of 33-5, Butler was one Gordon Hayward half court bank shot away from winning the 2010 NCAA National Championship over Duke. But, Hayward's shot was just off the mark and Duke escaped Butler for a 61-59 win.

Regardless of that outcome in 2010 against Duke or the 2011 National Championship loss to Connecticut, Butler seems to figure out how to get closer as a team, in order to strive to achieve its goals. Only time will tell what this trip to Australia will hold for this Butler Bulldog team.