It’s the only time all year that I didn’t make that team practice (the day before) physical and competitive. As coaches, at least I reflect every day and every year. We’re down three and Jacob Pullen - the game before against Xavier, he made the same 3 off the same play in the same spot - and shot it, that thing was down and it just wasn’t meant to be. ![]() ![]() And they just refused to allow us to win the game. “We make a 3 to go up one, which is our first lead with right under five minutes to go in the game. PREMIER PLAYERS: Meet the 10 semi-finalists for the Naismith Player of the Year award They were just good, there’s no other way to put it. Fast forward, and they had two guys that were established NBA starters in Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack. They played with the fewest amount of mistakes. I think you see that now with Brad Stevens’ team in the NBA. And then they were so efficient as to who they were. When I was watching them on film, their defensive physicality jumped out at me, and their size. First of all, they were the most physical team that we played all year. Martin: “That whole game, I can tell you whatever possession you want to know from it. Between Gordon Hayward’s 22 points and a 41-29 rebounding edge, the Bulldogs were magically going home to play in the Final Four. Maybe the fatigue had something to do with how they came from 10 points down in the second half to get the lead against Butler, but then faded in the final minutes and lost 63-56. 2 seed Wildcats had to survive a two-overtime 101-96 shootout with Xavier to get to the regional championship. Martin’s Kansas State was next in the Elite Eight. What George Mason did, Butler, VCU, Loyola of Chicago, go down the list of teams that were able to get there, I think that’s all good for our game that you can do that. I wouldn’t have been surprised had they won. We stopped them, the shot clock was out, and he had to throw one up there and it went in. The Bulldogs had gotten away with shooting only 40 percent.īoeheim: “Their guard, who was shooting something like 16 percent, took a 3 and hit the rim and it went six feet up in the air and came down through the basket. “That was a h-o-r-s-e shot,” Veasley said afterward. Butler eased in front, and the big moment came with 1:50 left, when Willie Veasley threw up something of a prayer, and the ball bounced high in the air off the rim, caromed off the backboard, and went in for a 3-pointer, and 58-54 Bulldog lead. Syracuse led by 54-50 with 5:23 left, but went nearly the next five minutes without a point. “We lost our center (Arinze Onuaku) on the next to last play of the Big East tournament, so we went out there without our center but we still had a good team.” I was happy it was a close game, that we had an opportunity to win. You didn’t know that at the time, so they were actually a little better than maybe people might have thought. We didn’t have a guy who played in the NBA as it turned out and they had Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack. I’ve gotten to know him through USA Basketball and he’s the nicest guy in the world. 5.īoeheim: “I knew Brad was a really good coach even before they started making their run, but I didn’t know him. But each and every one remembers the day in 2010 when they lined up against Butler.ĭEFENSIVE POY: 10 semifinalists announced for Naismith Men’s Defensive Player of the Year awardīoeheim and Syracuse faced Butler in the Sweet 16 in Salt Lake City. In the 10 years since, Jim Boeheim, Frank Martin, Tom Izzo and Mike Krzyzewski have coached more than a thousand games among, and all have gone to the Final Four. Ten years later, how to mark the occasion when a legend was made? How about talking to four renowned coaches who tried to stop it? How more perfect could it get? To this day, when upstarts dream of a March Madness fantasy, they usually evoke the name of Butler. And their home gym gave the world the ultimate sports underdog movie, Hoosiers. Since a Butler shot to win at the buzzer clanged off the rim.īy then, of course, the Bulldogs had become coast-to-coast darlings, from a school of barely 4,000, with a mid-major pedigree. Not until mighty Duke put an end to the ride on April 5 in the national championship game in Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, but six miles from the Butler campus. 22, 2009, and then the strangest thing happened. Those Bulldogs lost a game at UAB on Dec. ![]() It was a charming bunch, with a dashing young coach named Brad Stevens, a lovable bulldog mascot, and a gaggle of players who weren’t all that familiar with the national spotlight, but also didn’t care about the odds supposedly stacked against them. Once upon a time - 10 years ago to be exact - there was college basketball team from Butler.
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