Butler Basketball: Cinderella (and Favorite?) of 2010 NCAA Final Four

It seems that the only thing harder than beating the Butler Bulldogs these days is trying to classify them.

Are they a mid-major? Are they a Cinderella team? Are they now the favorite to win the national championship?

Many college basketball analysts would try to have you believe that Butler is too good to be considered a mid-major or a Cinderella story.

But the reality is that being a good basketball team capable of winning a national championship and being a mid-major and a Cinderella team should not be exclusive concepts.

The Bulldogs’ 33-year-old head coach (who looks like he’s 23), Brad Stevens readily accepts the role of being a mid-major. In his eyes being a mid-major is all about money and resources, but that’s all irrelevant once you get on the basketball court. Butler lacks the money and resources of other top programs, but can compete with them on the court, so Stevens readily accepts the label of mid-major because it just means that his team overachieves.

When you look at the Bulldogs’ undersized roster, devoid of top tier NBA talent (with the possible exception of sophomore Gordon Hayward) with two-thirds of it hailing from the school’s home state of Indiana, it’s clear that Butler does not have the resources and deep recruiting pipelines of a Duke, Michigan State, or West Virginia.

As to whether or not they are a Cinderella team—at this point of course they are. When you play in the Horizon League at a small school that has never advanced past the Sweet 16 before this year and you make it all the way to the Final Four, you are a Cinderella story.

When the Bulldogs advanced past UTEP and Murray St. in the first two rounds of the tournament, it wasn’t that surprising and the Bulldogs were rightfully not considered in the same breath with the almost completely unheralded teams like Cornell and St. Mary’s.

Butler’s past success in winning NCAA Tournament games, and recent success in winning 28 games on the year prior to the NCAA Tournament while earning a No. 5 seed, meant that an appearance in the Sweet 16 was not unexpected, unusual, or particularly noteworthy, as it might have been for another team from a mid-major conference.

But now that they have beaten No. 1 seed Syracuse and No. 2 seed Kansas State from the West regional and survived to play yet another weekend, Butler is a Cinderella story.

This isn’t like George Mason, an unknown No. 11 seed from the Colonial Athletic Association that barely made it into the 2006 NCAA tournament, making it all the way to the Final Four—that was possibly a once in a decade or once in a century underdog story—but when you put all of the facts together this is still one of the most surprising teams to make it to a Final Four in recent memory.

Honestly, how many experts picked this team to advance this far in the tournament? Not any that I know of.

Sure, it’s easy to look back with hindsight, as many college basketball analysts and writers are now doing, and realize that this team was good all year long and give them a belated pat on the back by telling them they are the real deal and not a Cinderella or mid-major team after all.

But that only confirms that this is a squad of unheralded overachievers, for the most part not heavily recruited out of high school by the elite programs of college basketball, playing in a second or third tier conference, and exceeding expectations when it matters the most.

Aside from their weak conference, lack of five-star recruits, and a dearth of historical success or reputation, there is no reason why Butler should have been excluded from the conversation of Final Four contenders in this year’s tournament.

The Bulldogs entered the NCAA tournament with a gaudy 28-4 record and with the nation’s longest winning streak of 20 games, dating all the way back to a December 22 loss to UAB.

That’s right—the Bulldogs have not lost a game in 2010.

If you look at Butler’s four losses, three of them were to NCAA Tournament teams (Minnesota, Georgetown, and Clemson). Only the loss at UAB was by double digits (10 points) or to a team that failed to make it into the field of 65.

In the two games before that uncharacteristic loss to UAB, Butler also happened to beat both Ohio St. and Xavier, teams that would go on to reach the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament.

So yes, with hindsight we can all see that Butler had the potential to do well in the tournament, but no one expected this.

Just as being a mid-major team doesn’t mean that you can’t play basketball—but simply that you play in a smaller conference and probably don’t have the resources of the power conference schools—being a Cinderella story doesn’t make you a bad team that happened to get lucky. But rather it makes you a good team that exceeded the expectations that everyone had for you based on history, reputation, talent, national exposure, and perhaps first impressions.

That’s exactly what Butler making it all the way to the Final Four is—a story about a team that has significantly exceeded the expectations that almost everyone had for it based on history, reputation, resources, and appearances.

Many experts are now picking Butler, second only to Duke, as the most likely national champion out of the Final Four participants.

But that doesn’t mean the Bulldogs wouldn’t be more of a Cinderella in victory than would West Virginia, hailing from the NCAA’s supposed top conference, the Big East, or Michigan State, which has been to more Final Fours (six) in the last twelve years than any other school.

Being a Cinderella or a mid-major isn’t always about how good a team is, but it’s about how much a team surprises and exceeds long-held expectations based on its history, resources, reputation, and in Butler’s case, its physical (under)size.

Given that Butler is playing in its home city of Indianapolis and that it took a much tougher road to the Final Four than any of the other three teams (Butler beat the two top seeds in its regional, while none of the other three teams had to play two of the top three teams in their respective regionals), one could make the argument that Butler is now the favorite to win the national championship (I would not).

Even still, they are a Cinderella story.

You can be a favorite and a Cinderella team at the same time.

At least Butler can.

The Bulldogs’ success and run through this tournament are quite unprecedented for a team and school with its attributes and history, and it’s making it awfully hard for everyone to classify them and put them into a neat little box.

Really there is no need—Butler’s story and success are unique and compelling with or without a label.