It looks like the Bulldogs are going to have a bit of a reset year as almost all of their 24-25 rotation is gone.
Team: Butler Bulldogs
2024-25 Record: 16-18, 5-13 Big East
2024-25 Big East Finish: Tied for 8th with St. John’s, lost the head-to-head tiebreaker 1-0, and thus ended up as the #9 seed in the Big East tournament
Final 2024-25 Rankings
NET: #128
Her Hoop Stats: #170
BartTorvik.com: #120
Postseason? After losing 66-50 to St. John’s in the 8/9 game of the Big East tournament, Butler earned a spot in the WNIT, the tertiary postseason event. They beat Illinois-Chicago at home before losing at Purdue Fort Wayne by 26 in the second round.
Notable Departures: Nearly everyone of note.
Let’s start with the women that we knew wouldn’t be back. Caroline Strande suffered an ACL tear midway through last year, which was her fifth year of eligibility, and she still finished the season as Butler’s leading scorer at 13.4 points per game. Sydney Jaynes wrapped up her four years at Butler, Kilyn McGuff only had one year of eligibility remaining after transferring over from Belmont last summer, and Ari Wiggins was on her second of two seasons at BU after a post-sophomore year transfer from Michigan. McGuff was the only other double digit scorer on the team last season at 12.3 per game, but she added 7.8 rebounds to lead the team. Wiggins was only playing 17 minutes a night, but she was second on the team in assists per game at just over two. Butler probably could have benefited from more three-point shooting last year from Jaynes as she hit nearly 43% of her attempts but only averaged 1.2 a night in just over 21 minutes per game.
That moves us along to the [adjusts abacus] five women who had a rotation role last season that are gone now even though they had eligibility remaining. In order of points per game last year:
Riley Makalusky: 8.2 ppg, started 24 of 33 appearances, averaged 24.4 minutes per game, transferred to West Virginia with 2 years remaining
Lily Carmody: 6.8 ppg, started 14 of 32 appearances, averaged 23.9 mpg, transferred to Boston College with 3 years remaining
Cristen Carter: 5.1 ppg, started 15 of 33 appearances, averaged 14.9 mpg, transferred to Georgetown with 2 years remaining
Jocelyn Land: 3.3 ppg, started 2 of 33 appearances, averaged 10.7 mpg, transferred to Montana with 3 years remaining
Karsyn Norman: 3.1 ppg, started 27 of 33 appearances, averaged 20.9 mpg, transferred to Ball State with 2 years remaining
There’s one more departure that doesn’t quite count as a loss from the 2024-25 team, but it’s pretty notable for “Marquette fans looking in on the Bulldogs” reasons. That’s Jordan Meulemans, who transferred from Butler to Marquette in the spring. She was a part-time starter in her two years at BU and averaged 8.1 points, 2.0 rebounds, and 1.2 assists per game in just under 28 minutes a night back in 2023-24. She sat out all of last season with a knee injury, so that’s not a loss from last year’s roster, but that’s one less person with Butler experience in the locker room.
Notable Returners: I opened the last section with “nearly” everyone, and so that means we get to talk about the one rotation player that’s returning for Butler. That’s Lily Zeinstra. The 5’11” guard started 22 times in 35 appearances as a freshman last year. She finished the year averaging 7.6 points and 2.9 rebounds per game while shooting over 40% behind the three-point line. Her numbers as a starter were a bit better: 8.7 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists in over 32 minutes per game.
There’s only two other returning women on the roster. One played just 179 minutes, one didn’t play at all as a freshman.
Notable Additions: Blue Star Basketball doesn’t register either of the two new freshmen on the Butler roster, even though Anna Wypych (6’0” guard) was the 2025 Michigan Miss Basketball. And so, we’ll move on to the seven incoming transfers on the roster while noting that it’s entirely possible that the two freshmen are going to have to play some kind of role because Lily Zeinstra can’t do everything herself.
Purely in terms of “what have you already done at the Division 1 level,” Nevaeh Jackson (6’0” guard) is the most notable incoming transfer for Butler. She started all but three of the 62 games she played at Valparaiso over the past two seasons. This past year, she averaged 13.8 points per game for the Beacons and fell just short of two steals per game, too. Jackson connected on 35% of her three-pointers as a sophomore, so BU fans will be hoping she can keep that up.
I’m going to bring up Saniya Jackson (6’0” guard) next because she’s Nevaeh’s twin sister more than anything else. In 2023-24, Saniya averaged 9.5 points and 3.3 rebounds for Valpo while playing with her sister. She had to sit out last season with a knee injury that needed surgery in November, so on one hand: Instant chemistry on and off the court for the Jacksons, but a huge question mark about what Saniya may or may not have lost in the injury.
Kennedy Langham (5’7” guard) was at Samford the past two seasons. She was a part time starter as a freshman and then started for all 31 appearances last year. The upside here is that she averaged 11.1 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 2.3 assists this past season. The downside is that she shot just 22% from behind the three-point line….. and that was an improvement from the year before.
Depth is always an important part of a basketball team, and Caroline Dotsey (6’2” forward) was a quality depth piece for Maine as a sophomore last year. She chipped in 9.7 points and 2.9 rebounds in less than 18 minutes a game, and she shot over 35% on threes. She has NCAA tournament experience as well, as the Black Bears were a #15 seed in her freshman year even if she barely played against Ohio State.
Butler’s other three transfers probably all fall into the category of “looking for an opportunity to do more.” McKenna Johnson (5’9” guard) played 153 total minutes for Minnesota as a freshman last year, Gabby Wilke (6’2” forward) started 16 of 31 games in her first year at South Dakota in 2024-25 but only averaged 5.9 points and 2.5 rebounds overall, and Mallory Miller (6’4” forward) is coming off an arm injury that kept her out for all of her second season at Arizona State. Miller wasn’t doing much on the court for the Sun Devils as a freshman at just 3.2 points and 2.8 rebounds in 14 minutes.
Coach: Austin Parkinson, entering his fourth season in charge in Indianapolis. He has a record of 42-54 in his three seasons since moving over from IU Indy.
Outlook: When we convened one year ago to see how things were going with Butler, I thought things were going pretty well for head coach Austin Parkinson. He led the Bulldogs to an immediate 10 win turnaround in his first year, and last summer, he was coming off another four win improvement. BU had matched their Big East win total from his first season, but thanks to a reduction in league games, they finished with a better winning percentage against conference foes in Year 2.
Now? Butler had one more win and one more loss in Year 3 than they had in Year 2, and the Bulldogs went one win backwards in Big East action.
I don’t think that’s entirely Parkinson’s fault. Losing Caroline Strande to injury in mid-December was clearly a blow to the season, as BU was 9-2 on the year heading into the game where she picked up the injury. That 9-2 included a 56-46 home win over an Indiana team that finished 20-13 on the year and earned a #9 seed in the NCAA tournament. The game where she suffered the injury? A 71-64 double overtime home loss to a Wisconsin team that went 13-17 and fired their head coach. Butler’s record from that Wisconsin game onwards? 7-16, including all of their 5-13 record against Big East teams.
Losing your leading scorer is obviously a problem. Losing your leading scorer after knowing you’re going to go the entire season without a key bench shooter (Jordan Meulemans) is even worse. The problem is that Parkinson didn’t really have a second punch to throw, and his team slowly drifted to a worse computer ranking than they started the year projected as…… and then the bottom dropped out.
Whatever progress and development Parkinson’s squad had shown through his first three years in charge is gone now. Losing the four seniors he knew he was going to lose was always going to be a bit of a knock, given how much they were collectively doing for the team. Losing five more rotation players — six, if you count Meulemans — to the transfer portal….. yeah, that’s a problem. Even worse: All six had multiple years of eligibility remaining, and all six were women that Parkinson himself had recruited to Butler. His entire plan for how he was building this program has gone completely up in smoke, all in one year.
It’s to the point where I have to ask what the heck is going on in Indianapolis. I get that 2024-25 wasn’t a fun time in terms of wins and losses for Butler, and I’m fine with people pursuing options that they feel are best for them…… but man, having your entire rotation vacate the premises feels like a sign that there’s something a lot worse going on than just “I think I’m better off somewhere else.” Could just be a cascading effect, mind you. I’m not sitting here minute by minute tracking when the departing transfers decided to leave, and maybe they saw one by one that it was just not going to be any fun next year as more and more teammates departed.
I can’t even jump to a place where I feel comfortable saying that Parkinson has brought in transfers that are obviously going to pop and do something next year. As I mentioned up top, three of them have no track record of being a notable contributor on a Division 1 team. Two of them played for a Valpo team that went 4-16 in Missouri Valley games when they were both major contributors.
It’s probably going to be a rough 2025-26 for Butler. I like what Austin Parkinson was doing so far with the Bulldogs, but there’s no way you can look at the shift from last year to next year and come up thinking anything but they’re going to take a pretty sizable step back.