Basketball, Columnists, Sports

FLAGLER: BU fans should find underdog to root for in Butler

It’s almost April. Baseball is back. You can walk outside without looking like an overstuffed penguin, and, less importantly to you, I have to go get a job in less than two months.

More importantly to you, the turn of the calendar and the warming temperatures mean that hockey and basketball are done. There will be no squeaking of sneakers or swishing of skates at Agganis Arena until November, and for most BU students, that means the end of the sports season.

But nationally, college basketball is entering its biggest weekend. And for hoopheads on Comm. Ave, that means it’s time to root for a new BU.

Butler University will return to the Final Four this weekend in Houston, Texas. Joining them will be fellow upstart Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Connecticut and University of Kentucky.

As you probably know, Butler was inches away from going to Houston this weekend as defending national champs.

If Gordon Hayward’s half-court heave at the buzzer had fallen in off the glass instead of bouncing back off the rim, we would have watched it approximately 100,000 times this March and we would probably be totally sick of it. But for good reason – if that shot fell, it would have been maybe the greatest sports moment of all time.

If Hayward made that shot, or for that matter, if he hit his leaning jumper that bounced off the inside of the rim with three seconds left, we would have heard the David beats Goliath, upstart coach beats legend, Jimmy Chitwood in Hoosiers stories until we couldn’t stand it anymore, and Butler would be walking into Houston with a massive target on its back.

Instead, Butler somehow snuck under the radar this year.

Maybe it’s their 34-year-old coach, Brad Stevens, who looks like he could throw on a jersey and play point guard and shows less emotion than Bill Belichick on the sideline. Maybe it’s that its leading scorer, Matt Howard looks like a taller version Saturday Night Live cast member Andy Samberg.

Somehow, we thought Butler was a team lucky to catch lightning in a bottle for a few weeks last year. We thought that without Hayward, last year’s superstar, the Bulldogs would be done by the first weekend.

But Butler rediscovered its flair for the dramatic.

The team didn’t look like it would make it out of its first game until Howard put back a rebound at the buzzer to defeat Old Dominion University. Butler then beat the University of Pittsburgh on last-second free throw, and most recently, the Bulldogs took down University of Florida in overtime.

This isn’t a team that flew through the tournament. Butler gutted out wins and mirrored the character of its coach. Stevens, despite his youth, showed absolutely no fear in facing Jamie Dixon and Billy Donovan this year, just as he was unfazed by matchups with Tom Izzo and Mike Krzyzewski last season.

Stevens believes he is the better coach with the better team every time Butler takes the floor, and the Butler players have exuded that same confidence and resolve in the last two tournaments.

Still, Butler’s incredible return to the Final Four was overshadowed by an equally amazing performance from VCU. The Rams had to win five games, not four, to earn a trip to Houston. The team also has a very young coach, Shaka Smart, whose energetic and intense style could not be more different from the calm and even-keeled Stevens.

VCU’s run to the Final Four is a great story. The team is just the third No. 11 seed to make it this far, tying Louisiana State University and fellow Colonial Athletic Association member George Mason University as the lowest seed ever to make a Final Four.

Watching ESPN pundits like Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale rip the selection committee for giving VCU an underserved at-large bid is great fun, even if most basketball fans would have said the same things had a camera been put in front of them at the time. And VCU hasn’t needed Butler’s late-game heroics in steamrolling national powerhouses like Georgetown University, Purdue University and the University of Kansas.

But what about Butler? Is it just last year’s Cinderella? Replaced in basketball fans’ hearts by a new, flashier, lower-seeded version?

Watching Gordon Hayward’s half-court shot go in the air a year ago, we could see flashes of Butler’s celebration that was to come, the Duke players in shock, the “nobody believed in us” speeches at the victory parade in Indianapolis. Then, the shot bounced out. The moments vanished.

Sports have a way of playing themselves out in dramatic ways. The Red Sox come back from 3-0 and win eight straight to break the curse in 2004.

BU hockey scores two goals in the last 90 seconds to tie the national championship game and wins in overtime.

Butler redeems last season’s loss and wins the 2011 NCAA Championship. After seeing the devastation and pain on the faces of the players who came so close last year, how can you not root for that?

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