| 07 April 2010
For any fan of college basketball, Monday night's National Championship game was the perfect ending to a wildly unpredictable and entertaining season. There was big bad Duke, a team in the highest rung of college basketball's caste system, owner of four National Championships and one mutant looking Hall of Fame coach, going up against tiny, little Butler, a team that would need a prayer, a miracle and an off night by Jon Scheyer if they had any chance of keeping the game close. It was a matchup made in college basketball (And CBS ratings) heaven.But as great as the good vs. evil, David vs. Goliath storyline was, I for one never really bought it.
After all, it was Butler that had the home-court advantage and the most skilled player on the court in Gordon Hayward. It was Butler that came into the game 33-4, having not lost a game since before Christmas (You read that correctly. We are now more than a quarter of the way through 2010, and until Monday, Butler had yet to lose this year). And it was Butler that came into this game having beaten three straight teams that collectively had spent more time at the top of the charts this year than Justin Bieber. What exactly did this team have to do to prove they were a worthy title game participant? Challenge Shaq, Kobe and the 2001 Lakers to a pick-up game?
Looking at their wins was even more revealing. They'd beaten two of the top 12 scoring teams in college basketball (Syracuse and Kansas State) and one which prides itself on defense (Michigan State). They'd beaten teams that were guard oriented and big down. Teams that wanted to play fast and slow. Teams that played zone defense and man-to-man. What could Duke possibly throw at them
that they hadn't seen yet this year?
And as Monday night's game tipped off and began to unfold, we saw everything from Butler that we'd see all tournament long, and all season long for that matter: Stifling defense; scrappy rebounding; timely shooting and contributions from up and down their bench. This was Butler basketball.
For most of you who watched the game (which I'm assuming is most anyone reading this), you know what happened next, mainly that no matter how hard Duke tried, Butler wouldn't let them pull away. The Bulldogs made key defensive stops, hit timely free throws, and pulled the game to within one possession with under 10 seconds to go. And after a Brian Zoubek missed free throw, Gordon Hayward had one final chance to win the game. He grabbed the rebound, dribbled to his right, and fired up a desperation three that was oh, so close, before just slightly rimming out.
Cue the confetti, signal the marching band, and get ready to set a couch on fire, Duke was your 2010 college basketball National Champion.
As I watched the postgame coverage, many of the analysts on TV started coming full circle on the point they'd made earlier in the day: How close David had come to knocking off Goliath. How close Butler had come to "doing it for the little guy." How close Butler was to changing college basketball forever.
Except here's the thing: College basketball has already been changed forever. Butler is now simply the face of that change.
College basketball is a sport that will never go back to the way it was 10 or 15 years ago. There are a million reasons why, and you already know most of them. Rookie contracts, the "one and done," rule, the change in the way professional teams evaluate and draft amateur talented, all leads to the annual stripping of the college game's best talent. Rather than players developing their game in an NCAA season, they are instead doing it as paid employees of NBA teams. This tournament alone was devoid of guys like Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, Kevin Love, Greg Oden, Jonny Flynn and a hundred others who have left college with eligibility on the table. I'm not saying I blame any of those guys (quite the opposite actually), just that this is the reality of the way basketball works now a days.
That exact point hit home to me Tuesday afternoon, as I watched a piece about the 1990 UNLV Runnin' Rebels, a team which is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their National Championship this month.
The most amazing part about that team wasn't that they won the championship in 1990, but that they returned all five starters in 1991 to defend their title. They eventually lost to Duke in the Final Four and later that spring, three of their starters- Greg Anthony, Stacey Augmon and Larry Johnson- were all selected in the first 12 picks of the NBA Draft.
That was only 20 years ago, in most of our lifetime's. But if that UNLV team was playing in today's college basketball world, they would have never come back to defend their title. Anthony, Augmon and Johnson would simply have had too much to risk by returning to the college game, and much like John Calipari or Roy Williams does now, Jerry Tarkanian would have pushed them out the door after their junior years (If not sooner) and brought in his next batch of super recruits.
Again, this isn't a good or bad thing, just the way things are in 2010. The truly elite programs put teams together for one run at a national title, before their guys go pro and the coach reloads up for the next run. Sometimes, it works out, like for Kansas in 2008. They won a title, then watched three players (Darrell Arthur, Mario Chalmers and Brandon Rush) leave school before their four years were done. Other times it doesn't work out, like with what happened to Kansas this year.
So what does this all have to do with Butler? Well, Butler, along with Gonzaga and a few other schools, have proven that in this day and age, because of the changes in the game, you don't need to be a Kansas, Kentucky or UCLA to win at college basketball's highest level.
Look at Butler. This is a program that is run extremely well from top to bottom. When previous coaches (Thad Matta, Todd Lickliter) have left for other jobs, they've got the next guy ready to step in, almost like a publicly traded company that only promotes CEO's from within. Brad Stevens started with Butler as an unpaid assistant, then moved to Director of Basketball Ops, onto an assistant coach, then a head coach. By the time he got to the top, he knew this program in and out, and his players knew him too. No awkward coaching change in philosophy or system, no players revolt over the new guy. Just a conveyor belt of continuity.
Like Gonzaga, Butler has been able to parlay success in previous years, into credible out of conference scheduling.
This year alone, Butler played Clemson, Minnesota, Georgetown, Ohio State, Xavier and Siena all either at home or on neutral courts, the biggest reason why they got a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, despite playing in a conference about as competitive as a beauty contest between Jessica Alba and Ellen Degeneres. Not every non-BCS school can schedule like Butler does, but they are able to do so because they've marketed and built themselves into a college basketball entity over the last decade. Why can't any other small school do the same over the next 10 years?
Finally the players. Ohh the players. By now you know it was bizarre circumstances that led most of the guys on the 2010 roster to the Butler campus: Point guard Ronald Nored was set to go to Western Kentucky, before a coaching change made him rethink his committment; Gordon Hayward had a freakish growth spurt at the end of high school that transformed him from a shooting guard barely 6'0 feet tall, into a 6'9 small forward; Matt Howard is only Indianapolis after Purdue refused to accept him because of his hideous facial hair (Gotcha. I made that one up).
But more than Stevens ability to find these players, was the ability to mold them into the team that you saw on Monday night. And that's the greatest virtue these non-BCS schools have, the ability to patiently develop their players. There are no agents, NBA GM's or overzelous parents, family members or high school buddies trying to push them to the pros at the earliest possible moment. Instead, the Butler's, Gonzaga's and every other small school has the ability to nurture these young players and let them develop at their own pace.
For example, did you know that of the nine players who played in Butler's 2009 NCAA Tournament loss to LSU, all nine were on the court in Monday night's championship game as well? The same thing with the Northern Iowa team that lost to Michigan State in the Sweet 16, they returned all five starters from last year's team. While there's certainly something to be said for the raw basketball talent that Kansas, Kentucky and Syracuse displayed over the course of this season, there's also something to be said for teams like Butler and Northern Iowa, who'd played played together for 18 months straight, and knew each other in and out.
Which is why college basketball is so different than it was even just a few seasons ago. If this were 1995 or 2000, Brad Stevens would have parlayed this run into a big, fat, multi-million dollar contract at some big time school, leaving skid marks on his way off of Butler's campus.
Now? What's the point? Other than a few dollars and cents that Oregon or Clemson might tempt him with this offseason, what can those schools offer him that Butler can't? Just a few years ago, it was impossible to win at Butler, which is why guys like Stevens former boss Todd Lickliter left for basketball dead ends like Iowa (where he was fired a few weeks ago), Nebraska and Penn State. In 2010 Stevens has proven that you can win, and win big at a non-BCS school (Notice how I refuse to call Butler a mid-major? Ok, just checking) in the Horizon League. Why would he want to leave? And oh, by the way, even if he did, everything is in place for the next guy to succeed after him.
It's because of this, that Butler's run to the National Championship wasn't the signal for a beginning of change, but proof that we're already in the midst of it.
While college basketball will always be dominated by the North Carolina's, Kentucky's, UConn's, UCLA's and Syracuse's, it is now not exclusively dominated by them. As a matter of fact look at that list again. While Butler has made the NCAA Tournament for the last four years, none of those other schools mentioned can say the same.
So while it might be one of those teams, or Duke, or Michigan State, or Villanova cutting down the nets next year in March, eventually sooner, rather than later, a non-BCS school will win the National Championship too. It might be Butler, but it might not be. It could be Gonzaga. Or Xavier. Or Temple. Or some team we don't even really know about yet that has been following the model put in place by those other schools.
Yes college basketball will always be a sport for the bluest of blue bloods, but it's time to make room for the little guys too.
Everyone is talking about Butler's loss on Monday night as the end of something special.
Truthfully it's quite the opposite. It's only the beginning.
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