Coming up 47 feet short of National Championship nothing to sneeze at

First appeared on April 7th, 2010
in The Lebanon Reporter

Somebody get Blue II some aspirin. Apparently in an effort to forget Butler’s loss Monday night he lapped up a bit too much of Duke’s celebratory champagne from the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium. So much so they found him passed out Tuesday morning on the front lawn of the Governor’s mansion.


So the Butler Bulldogs are not National Champions. Despite their heartbreaking loss to Duke, there are still so many feel good stories when it comes to Butler that you can’t fit them all into one column. I had decided, in the classic style of the part-time pretend sports columnist who takes himself too seriously, to take the easy way out and write the all-encompassing “Despite the loss, let not this Butler team be forgotten” piece. You know, the one peppered with words like “epic” and “improbable” all the while waxing poetic about Butler being a team of destiny. But that seems like a fairly obvious thing to do now.

I can’t begin to tell you how epic this column was going to be had Butler won however. Here’s a sampling of the flowery prose you could have expected: “Fifty years from now, when the Final Four returns to Indianapolis, officials will once again trot out basketball legends from bygone eras. Small children will look on with wonderment as an aged Gordon Heyward fondly recalls the soft-spoken, baby-faced coach who proved to his players that dreams can come true. The adults will whisper and scoff as if there were no way Butler could have really won it all.”

But alas even Heyward, with as great as he was during the Tournament, couldn’t get a half-court shot that would have won it all in front of 70,000 to fall. And so now I have nothing to write about. Lack of respect from those at the “Four Letter” (yes I mean you Digger) was one possible angle, but even that is somewhat understandable considering Butler’s advancing this far was never in the plans. Surely even Bulldog Head Coach Brad Stevens would admit it was really never in his plans either.

Sure Butler was given some recognition during the season with rankings in the Top 15. And, yes the Selection Committee likely felt charitable handing a 5 seed to a Mid Major. But once the ball was tossed up in the Tournament, the experts forewarned of the smothering 2-3 zone of Syracuse, K-State’s size and Michigan State’s experience, yet all the while Butler simply played harder, smarter and better than all those teams.

There are just so many things this team did to win that stat sheets don’t chart. But they belong to history now and history will remember them as an unselfish team with relentless desire and an uncommon understanding of basketball’s fundamentals. Despite the loss, history should define these players as champions and their rare attributes as the “Butler way”.

But alas, in the face of such an incredible run and heartbreaking loss, this column does not belong to Butler. This is more about one of the greatest NCAA Tournaments I’ve ever seen (and this is saying a lot considering Indiana wasn’t playing). More to the point this is about the NCAA proposing changes to their tournament in the face of one of the most dramatic on record.

Is it simply human nature that man feels compelled to change things when they appear to be at their best? Color Television to HD. The two-slot toaster to four, then six. Bigger is not always better (see Indiana Class Basketball for proof). So while you are firing off that health care letter to your local senator, throw in something about keeping the NCAA Tournament field at 64. Maybe then we’ll all get something worthwhile.