It's still hard to fully grasp. Butler University is going to the Final Four.
As I stood outside of Hinkle Fieldhouse at 3:00 AM in the rain, my mind was wandering all over the place. How did this happen? Can this team win a national championship? How will this affect Butler basketball in the future? How did this school do this? Why is there a person dressed like a gorilla?
Butler got here because of their defense. Ron Nored, Shawn Van Zant and Willie Veasley are all lockdown perimeter defenders. If you score a high percentage of your points from the guard spot you're in trouble against Butler. Fatigue is for the weak. I don't buy that excuse for Kansas State. These are 20-22 year-olds. That excuse is tired. Butler's defense never tired.
With Kentucky now eliminated, the field is wide open. No game will be easy for Butler but they'll have a chance against every team left. Kentucky was the one team that I thought could overwhelm Butler. UK being eliminated also affects how many Butler fans there might be at Lucas Oil. Lexington is only three hours away and downtown Indianapolis would have turned a familiar shade of blue had the Wildcats beat West Virginia.
ESPN Analyst Fran Fraschilla told a story at the HL championship a couple years ago that I'll try to paraphrase here. Fraschilla said that he knew Gonzaga ‘made it' when he saw Gonzaga t-shirts being sold at an airport in Texas. They had crossed over into the minds of mainstream america. Fraschilla then said his son really wanted a Butler shirt. Just years before his son had said the same thing about Gonzaga.
Butler is oh so close to becoming a national brand. The first area where it will show itself is recruiting. Butler has a nice trio of kids coming in. Crishawn Hopkins will give Butler a type of athleticism they've never had. Erik Fromm is the polished size coming from a high school powerhouse. Khyle Marshall represents the type of recruit Butler has been able to secure only in the last couple years. A 6-7 wing with an offer from several big conference schools including Kansas State. This run will bring a new type of recruit. Cody Zeller would represent a paradigm shift in their recruiting. There will be more Cody Zellers in Butler's future. Don't be surprised by a big time transfer in the next couple of years.
All of this would seem to be awful news for Horizon League schools. Butler's had their way with the league for a few years now with similar talent to the rest of the league. Players like Andy Polka from Loyola and Wright State's Vaughn Duggins were both recruited hard by Butler. Those occurrences will now be few and far between. The Gonzaga/West Coast Conference example is appropriate because they are really the only example of a true mid-major conference being headlined by a ‘national mid-major'. But there are so many differences between the WCC and the Horizon League, the biggest being the quality of basketball, that I'm not sure how much you can glean from that example.
So, Butler is in the Final Four. It sounds strange....foreign....different...GOOD.
