Is Butler basketball back? Back to the Butler basketball of the earlier part of this decade? With back to back national title game appearances in 2010 and 2011, Butler basketball supplanted Gonzaga as the one mid-major playing at the high-major level. Butler Blue was among the college basketball blue bloods. Then Brad Stevens bolted for Boston finally, after years of flirting with bigger jobs.
Brandon Miller took over and the first transition season was extremely rough- a 14-17 season that included a very embarrassing home loss to lowly DePaul. Prospects for Butler basketball are looking up in year two however.
Interim head coach Chris Holtman has them off to a 7-1 start. (Miller requested, and was granted a medical leave on October 4th)
They came into a nationally televised game (not premium or even basic cable, regular free television) ranked #23 in the AP poll. That’s mostly on the strength of a signature win over then #5 North Carolina in the Battle of Atlantis. It was a solid win, but lost some luster when the Tar Heels bombed badly versus the Iowa Hawkeyes in the B1G/ACC Challenge. UNC seems a bit overrated thus far.
And of course, Butler themselves stumbled, losing by 13 to Oklahoma in the very next game. Although the next two contests solidified their position in the AP top 25 (close win over a decent Georgetown team, commanding 23 point rout at Indiana State)
Still, Wichita State is the fashionable and trendy “mid-major in name only” right now. Until the Bulldogs can reclaim it with another very deep NCAA Tournament run. People love to slap the meaningless and idiotic “blue-collar” cliche on athletes, coaches and teams all the time. It’s moronically attached to both the Butler basketball team and their opponents today, the Northwestern Wildcats, A LOT!
Northwestern is a small private school with a yearly cost-of-attendance that nears $60,000. Butler is also private, with an even smaller enrollment. It’s situated within walking distance of the old money super-mansions of Meridian St. A short drive to the north you’ll find the new money McMansions of Kessler Boulevard. It’s ridiculous to call either school “blue collar.” Or to even mix socioeconomics with basketball. Or labor category distinction. This is basketball, a kids game played by college students. Save the class warfare and labor strife for the political arena; not the basketball arena.
The Bulldogs didn’t really impress for the national television audience today. If you believe in the Sagarin and KenPom, then you know how awful Northwestern’s place is among those rankings, and other similar metrics. So for Butler basketball to let the Wildcats hang around until so late in the second half is not a ringing endorsement of their potential. Until Kellen Dunham made that steal and converted the lay-in on the fast-break inside three minutes to play, NU was in this game the whole way.
The basket put Butler up 61-54 with just over 2 minutes to play and was indicative of how the late afternoon matinee went. Every time Chris Collins’ side got close, Dunham or Roosevelt Jones made a big basket to extend the lead.
“We had a nice moment there late,” said Holtman.
This fight between Cats and Dogs was closer than most experts thought it would be.
“We knew this was going to be a grind it out game,” said Holtman.
“We thought it was going to be a low possession game, and you kind of break through. It kind of went as we thought it would.”
However, Butler basketball has two hot dates coming up, on New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, in which they can show the nation that they have indeed returned to 2010-11 level national prominence. They’re at Villanova December 31st and host Nova on February 14th.
“This was a league game, it had that kind of feel for us,” said Holtman.
“If you don’t get excited for this then you don’t like this game.”
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2