Amazing Deja vu for Butler: Bulldogs Reach Final Four Again

In one of my brackets, which has deservedly been destroyed by the Madness, I picked Old Dominion to defeat the Butler Bulldogs in the first round. After their first round game officially began, I asked myself "Why?"

It was an obvious question without a sane answer. Naively, I didn’t think they would do it again, but they did. Behind the 27 points from senior guard Shelvin Mack, the Bulldogs are going to the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four for the second straight season.

Entering the tournament in 2010, Butler was an unknown. They were just the champions of a league few had much knowledge of, with players that needed to be researched. So it came to a surprise that as a fifth-seed, they upset UTEP by 18, snuck by 13-seed Murray State, similarly squeaked past top-seeded Syracuse, defeated Michigan State to reach the championship game against Duke and only lost by two to the Blue Devils after the half-court heave from star Gordon Hayward found an unkind rim. They were a sensation.

After their win over UTEP, the state of Indiana was buzzing. By the end, the whole country was. Hayward’s performance on the biggest of stages transformed him into a first-round pick, Stevens got a raise, and Mack, Matt Howard, Shawn Vansant, and Ronald Nored put their names on the map.

The Bulldogs, with an experienced roster and Brad Stevens, a genius 34-year-old coach who looks like he’s younger than some of his players, were not to be bet against. They beat ODU, then came the exhilarating defeat of number-one seeded Pittsburgh followed by their take-down of Wisconsin. An Elite Eight matchup was set with the second-seeded Florida Gators. Of course they would prevail, doing so in exciting overtime fashion.

In late January and into early February, Butler lost three straight games, two coming in overtime and the other a two-point regulation loss. That stretch put them at eight losses for the season with nine games remaining. During the 2009-2010 season, Butler lost a grand total of five games, none of which coming in their Horizon League. This magical regular season could not be duplicated, and the regression was in part due to losing Hayward to the NBA.

The Bulldogs weren’t about to fold. Behind the brilliant coaching of Stevens and the increasingly solid play of Mack and Howard, they won their final nine games. That did not give them the outright conference title, as Cleveland State—which is also known for pulling off upsets in dramatic fashion—tied them with a record of 13-5 and 27-9 overall. Despite the tie, it was Bulter that would make the NCAA Tournament. Named the eighth seed, they stared at the same uphill climb they did in 2010, with remarkably the same results thus far.

Their win over second-seeded Florida wasn’t pretty. None of their wins have been, but they somehow find a way, scratching and clawing with intensified defense and clutch shooting by their now household names. With nine and a half minutes left against the Gators, they trailed by 11, 51-40. Their play during the remainder of regulation showed just how talented this team is and was yet another reminder of how horribly wrong I was to pick against them.

Suddenly, they entered another gear. All superior teams have the tendency to do this to say it’s time to make our move. Butler flipped a switch, starting to force turnovers and capitalize off them. And when Florida did score, they had an answer. Over the first seven minutes of their run, the Gators 11-point lead had evaporated, culminating with Mack hitting two jumpers to notch a 57-all tie. Florida was held to just three points over the final two-plus minutes of the second half, and overtime was forced.

This was Butler basketball at its finest, setting up the back-and-forth finish. Mack scored their final five points in overtime, and as Erving Walker’s three-pointer and Kenny Boynton’s heave missed, the guard was celebrating once again with his teammates. They received their Final Four t-shirts and hats as before, just with a new design and a new year, and each player climbed atop the ladder, scissors in hand, and snipped a piece of the net in celebration.

The cutting of the nets is something that’s also done at the end by the winner of the National Championship. To build upon last season, that’s all Butler has to do. And Hayward, all smiles watching their defeat of Florida from the Utah Jazz locker room, is excited to see if his former teammates can in fact collect two more wins and be atop the college basketball world.

“At the beginning of the season, I knew they had potential. They went through those struggles, and I think everyone thought, ‘Hey, what’s going on? You guys need to get together,’” Hayward said to Jody Genessy of the Deseret News. “I talked to some of those guys and they’ve come together. They’ve got the players and anything can happen.”

Anything has so far, and the Bulldogs hope this time everything does.

(Photo: Daylife)