NCAA Tournament Results: Butler Misfires Badly To Lose Title To Connecticut

After a sleepless night, Butler coaches and players will get to their feet today, shaking their heads.

After Connecticut won the national championship game, Kemba Walker said, “It was like playing in a dream.” Butler, too, felt like they were dreaming, except theirs was nightmare.

If coach Brad Stevens would have been presented with this postgame stat sheet (see below) before the finale, he would have taken it and in his heart known his team would be national champions.

• Hold Connecticut to 34.9 percent shooting 

• The Huskies make one of 11 three-point shots

• Commit five fewer turnovers than UConn

• Have a 19-to-15 offensive rebounding edge

But the one aspect Stevens or his team could not account for was Connecticut’s defense making them colder than a New England nor'easter storm.

The Bulldogs were a horrifying 12-for-64 shooting, which is 18.8 percent. Consider this: If Butler just has an off-night shooting, they are 22-for-64, 34.3 percent and those 10 extra baskets have them cutting down the nets.

Instead, they have an historically dreadful night.

Think about it: Butler was 3-for-31 inside the arc—3-for-31! The previous fewest two-point buckets in a championship games was nine by Oklahoma State 62 years ago.

Of the 52 errant shots the team in the dark uniforms missed, roughly 10-12 were very close to going through the net as near misses, but the others were stone-cold attempts, missing their target by six or more inches. Only the local Houston bricklayers would have appreciated such a performance.

Though there was no official monitoring of this during the NCAA title tilt, the contest probably required a number of basketballs since all the clanging off the rims likely resulted in a loss of air pressure in the balls and NCAA officials were ferociously pumping the spheres back up to normal pressure standards.

In the end, Connecticut never sniffed 60 points in either conflict in Houston and will be leaving town with two made three-point shots in 80 minutes of basketball and the championship hardware.

The Huskies defense deserves the lion’s share of credit; however, CBS analyst Clark Kellogg said it best about Butler shooting: “Unparalleled ineptitude.”