HOW YOU CAN BENEFIT FROM BUTLER BASKETBALL

I’m bummed over Butler’s loss in the National Championship! Not because they didn’t play well; they did. Butler went on one of the best NCAA tournament defensive stands ever not allowing any team to score 60 points in a tourney game. That remarkable run carried over to the National Championship game holding high-riding Duke to 61 points. It’s the underdog image the Bulldogs portrayed (pardon the pun) which inspires the rest of us to know how extraordinary really can be accomplished by just that, extraordinary hard work, discipline and intelligence. The term student athlete is no-joke at Butler; Coach Stevens made his players go to class on Monday, arguably the biggest day in their basketball careers.   
 
This team, which came within a buzzer-beating shot of winning the National Championship, won the hearts of the basketball-crazed state which formerly boasted of IU and Purdue, and captured the imagination of the country who won’t soon forget their journey. The dream to be the ‘best team in the country for forty minutes,’ as thirty three year old Coach Brad Stevens told the group on the first day of practice last year, grew and fueled the fire that made the impossible a possibility. 

As a Hoosier, I am especially proud of this team. But as a parent of a graduate, I am ecstatic because I know I invested well in the ‘Butler Way.’ Part of their inspirational appeal was the quiet deliberate way they dismantled the giants as the only team to beat one and two seeds to get to the final game.  “I think it gave all of us hope,” one fan stated. “Win this for all the small schools that will never get here,” read a sign on the campus fraternity row, quoting a line uttered in Hoosiers, the movie about Indiana basketball.

However Butler’s performance throughout the tourney was not a Hollywood script but the result of a determined group of individuals who preferred to be a team. Everyone played their part with purposeful precision. No super-star attitudes or lottery picks here. There was a tough tenacity to this team that made the most of their talent along with a very calming calculating coach who believed in them and provided the game plan. Supporters are thrilled to have him at the helm for the next twelve years and are looking for a new basketball dynasty to emerge from the state.

Besides giving basketball buffs and the whole country, judging from the highest ratings since ’99, something to cheer for, what benefits can be learned from watching this small school become the biggest thing in college basketball right now? “I don’t know there’s just one thing, Butler athletic director Barry Collier said, “The success of the team comes from simply approaching the immediate goal, the immediate task and not accepting excuses or qualifying their effort or anything else.” It’s also the way the team respects and interacts with each other, the attitude of selflessness, and the giving of 100% in everything they do that promotes positive feelings in the program. This mind-set has become contagious throughout the Indianapolis community.