A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
The biggest game of the Tom Crean Era takes place tonight in Bloomington.
Butler (3-2), the two-time national runners-up, heads south to play Indiana (5-0) in a game that Crean desperately needs to win against the coach that some in the Hoosier fan base think should have his job.
From a sports perspective, this isn’t exactly the best time of the year for me.
Playoff hockey is great, but I don’t have a rooting interest. We’re still about two months from the end of the marathon NBA Playoffs, which I don’t follow that closely anyway. And I’m a Reds fan, but I don’t get to see many games, so at this stage of the season fantasy baseball is my main lifeline into the sport.
Consequently, I have found myself taking a dangerously early look at the 2011-12 college basketball season for the last couple weeks.
Let’s just get a few things out of the way:
Connecticut is an incredible basketball team. What they accomplished over the past month is truly something to be admired. They played with an almost unmatched intensity at both ends of the floor, and are certainly worthy champions.
Kemba Walker – not Jimmer Fredette, Nolan Smith, or Jared Sullinger – is by far the best player in college basketball. He is offensively breathtaking, and always gives his all on both ends of the floor. He was an awesome leader on a worthy champion.
Jim Calhoun is a great coach. Even though this championship may not count some day, and his ethics have always been questionable at best, you can’t argue with the numbers: 850 wins, .700 winning percentage, 3 national titles and 11 Big East Championships.
Go ahead and compare those numbers with Bobby Knight…you will be stunned. And trust me, I don’t throw around Bobby Knight comparisons lightly.
Really, I don’t want to take anything away from the Huskies today. They beat Butler at their own game: they won ugly.
All of that said, this loss hurts worse than most.
Editor’s note: I wrote the post below on March 20th, soon after Butler defeated Pittsburgh to advance to the Sweet 16. I am bringing it back to the front of the site because the questions about Brad Stevens’ future have only intensified since that win, with Butler now sitting on the precipice of the most unlikely NCAA title of all-time.
Since I wrote this, many other posts have come out parroting these points – with some doing this extremely well and adding further insight, like Dan Wetzel today. For those wondering why Brad Stevens would eschew more money and seemingly “bigger” jobs to remain at Butler, this post explains it.
As soon as the final buzzer sounded to officially conclude Butler’s thrilling victory over Pittsburgh (or wait – was that a whistle!?) it was inevitable: the talk of Brad Stevens leaving Indy for seemingly greener coaching pastures.
For example, I tweeted (only half-jokingly) that I was going to add a category to my bracket predictions for next year that awards a point “if your coach is Brad Stevens.” Immediately I received this response from Twitter user @EricJDoll: “So Tennessee gets an automatic bonus point?” I responded that there is no way Stevens will be in Knoxville next year and that the Tennessee job isn’t nearly as good a job as the Butler gig that Stevens already has. @EricJDoll responded: “I hope he stays at Butler, but somebody is going to throw A LOT of money at him this summer.”
And he’s right. There is absolutely no hotter coaching name than Brad Stevens, and a number of high profile schools would probably fire their current coach if they knew they could bring in Stevens. So any big conference team in a BCS conference would gladly throw buckets of money at Stevens to lure him away from Indy. But it ain’t happening.
In this post, I’m going to outline a number of reasons that those buckets of money will not and should not matter. Brad Stevens is going to be a ‘Dawg for a long, long time.
Tonight one of the most exciting and unpredictable NCAA Tournaments that I can remember will end with either Butler or Connecticut being crowned NCAA Champion.
The game tips off late, but we’ll be live blogging right here as we’ve done for so much of the tournament thus far.
Vegas has, unsurprisingly but irresponsibly, made UCONN a 4 point favorite over Butler tonight. All but two brave souls (Hubert Davis and Doug Gottlieb) at Connecticut-based ESPN picked the Huskies to beat the Bulldogs. Until the VCU game, I do not know ANY ESPN jerks who picked Butler.
I know Duke alum Seth Davis — one of the worst prognosticators on earth, despite spending every hour of his privileged life obsessing about 19 year olds bouncing an orange ball – and others at CBS have picked against Butler every time this and last March (until perhaps Saturday, since BU played another so-called “mid major”).
Butler won every game – sans the three inch decision versus Duke one year ago tonight. (A game I attended)
After Kentucky & Connecticut set basketball fundamentals back 50 years with one of the most undisciplined, schoolyard style, poorly-played, terribly-coached second halves in tourney history Saturday night, the cliche elites are saying “Kemba Walker is too good for Butler.”
Seth Davis, who’s never missed a chance to pick against Butler the past two tourneys, told Sporting News Radio this morning, ”Kemba Walker won’t let Connecticut lose.” Yeah, Sethy, because Shelvin Mack, Ron Nored and Matt Howard have definitely proven they’re willing to let Butler lose over the years.”
Foolish. [Read more...]
Editor’s note: this was originally posted last week, but I’m bringing back to the front of the site for those who missed it. Great work by Twitch. And here is his analysis and prediction for tonight’s National Championship game between Butler and UConn.
Butler wasn’t big enough.
Old Dominion was the BEST rebounding team in the nation. Sure, Butler had finished up a solid season, but they were nowhere near the same level of a year ago.
They were too thin up front. Howard and Smith were certain to get in foul trouble, and as soon as that happened, the Bulldogs wouldn’t be able to keep the best team from the Colonial League off the boards.
Butler really had no chance.
On paper…
If you say that you had Butler and VCU facing off in the Final Four, you’re a liar. Well…unless you’re these two folks. They did actually have Butler and VCU in the Final Four.
But they’re also insane. They have to be. Right?
Apparently not.
Saturday night, the most unlikely Final 4 in NCAA Tournament history will tip off when Horizon League champion Butler, an 8 seed, faces Colonial Athletic Association runner-up Virginia Commonwealth, an 11 seed.
March Madness indeed.
Earlier today, Matt Painter made Purdue fans sing out with joy when he announced that he will be staying at Purdue rather than accept Missouri’s offer to be its new head coach. Painter leveraged Purdue into taking more money out of its privately funded coffers so he could sign an 8-year contract extension, saying, “At the end of the day, my heart is at Purdue, and this is a place where I want to win a national championship.”
That is why all across West Lafayette you could hear choruses of “…ever faithful, ever true, thus we raise our song anew; of the days we’ve spent with you, all hail, our old, Purdue!”
But just because Painter is staying a Boiler does not mean all is perfect. Many people question how Painter handled this situation, including Purdue’s own mascot Purdue Pete, which means Painter has some ‘splaining to do.
And in terms of winning championships, there is that tricky little situation going on at a previously harmless Horizon League “mid-major” that doesn’t seem so harmless, nor so “mid”, anymore.
Details of both aspects of the aftermath of Painter’s announcement are included in our latest photo story.
If a normal picture is worth a thousand words, the picture below might just be worth sixty-eight thousand words.
There is no chance in hell this is what Brad Stevens was thinking when this picture was taken, but it certainly is what his Butler Bulldogs and their March dominance represent: suck it college basketball establishment.
Yep, tiny Butler from the disrespected Horizon League is headed back to the Final Four.
Oftentimes, it’s easy to break down a game.
Team A has much more of an inside presence on both ends than Team B…so it will be a tough matchup for B.
Team A has nobody that can guard Player X on Team B…so it will be a tough matchup for A.
Many times, we line up the teams, compare individual players, maybe look at the bench and the coach, and come away with a good synopsis of what is likely to happen.
Then, there are the games like this year’s Sweet 16 matchup between Wisconsin and Butler.
I’ll be damned…Butler is doing it again.
With a thrilling 71-70 victory over #1 seed Pittsburgh, Brad Stevens and the #8 seed Bulldogs are moving on to the Sweet 16.
In the locker room after the game, a jubilant bunch of ‘Dawgs and their terrific coach celebrated what has become commonplace for them: a down-to-the-wire victory over a higher profile, favored foe.
In this post, we break down the TV schedule for the first Saturday of action in March Madness 2011. Get the start times for each contest, which network it is one, and which announcers will be calling the game.
And then I’ll let you know what I’m most looking forward to on Saturday.
“It’s hard to beat a team three times.”
This folk wisdom has been passed down among sports fans (and particularly college basketball and pro football fans) for decades. The idea is as follows: if Team A defeats Team B twice, and Teams A and B meet for a third time, Team A will have a harder time winning the third game than it did winning either of the first two.
But what do the numbers and the empirical evidence say? Will they?
