Sports Then and Now

VCU has shouted loudly with their actions during the NCAA Tournament to reach the Final Four.

If Jay Bilas, Dick Vitale and the legion of other NCAA basketball “experts” we regularly see on television were in charge of selecting the NCAA Tournament field, the VCU Rams might be on their way to New York for the NIT Finals or getting back in the swing of classes after the end of basketball season. But fortunately, those “experts” are not in charge and instead the Rams are preparing for a trip to Houston for the first Final Four appearance in school history.

Given how bleak the experts believed the chances were for the Rams to make the field two weeks ago, the team didn’t even bother watching the selection show together. But within hours of the announcement they were on their way to Dayton and have been on an amazing trip ever since.

Following their dominating 71-61 victory over top seeded Kansas, the Rams are now the first team in NCAA Tournament history to advance to the Final Four after winning five tournament games. They did so by defeating teams from the Pac-10, Big East, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 and winning four of those games by double digits.

Coupled with the Elite Eight victory by Butler, we are now guaranteed a team from a non “power” conference reaching the NCAA Championship Game for the third time in four years.

Both Butler a year ago and Memphis in 2008 fell just short, but given the lack of dominance by big conference schools in recent years you have to believe that 2011 could bring the first NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Champion from a non-power conference to cut down the nets since UNLV in 1990. Read the rest of this entry →

Head Coach Brad Stevens and the Butler Bulldogs are heading back to the Final Four.

Since the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, a school has reached the Final Four in consecutive years a total of 13 times. The list includes many of the usual suspects, Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina (twice), Michigan State (twice), Florida and UCLA among others. After their overtime victory Saturday night against Florida, the list now also includes the Butler Bulldogs.

As a private liberal arts school near Indianapolis with roughly 4,500 students (undergrad and graduate), Butler would seem to be an unlikely candidate to be known as a basketball powerhouse.

Yet, Butler is now clearly the poster child for a new era in college basketball where the gap in talent and ability between schools from the “power” conferences and the rest of college basketball is quickly shrinking.

Unlike the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, which was the first non-power conference school to reach consecutive Final Fours from 1990-1991, Butler is not creating success by separating the two words student and athlete.

Instead, Butler has created a culture of success on the court while maintaining a high level of academic success. Read the rest of this entry →