Running 2010 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament thread

Ebanks sucks, but even without (or with) him IU would have a monster squad.

They need to throw the world at the Butler coach and hope he will be as successful and long tenured as another young coach they took a chance on the 1970s.

 

Are you implying that Indiana sign the Butler coach? What's wrong with Crean?

 

In seven seasons since Wade left MU, Crean has won one NCAA Tournament game. I wont even go into the 16-46 mark he has so far at IU.

I think this Stevens guy is one of the great young coaches to come along in the past 10-20 years.

 

Is this where we're at? Tom Crean gets two years to rebuild a program that was absolutely decimated by transfers and scandal? Including a second season in which his best player missed the entire Big Ten season? Because a 33-year-old wunderkind has won a few games up the street?

Ask Iowa how well raiding Butler worked out.

To crossthread from the journalism board, Kentucky has some competition.

 

If Brad Stevens does get offers, AD Barry Collier will post photos of Todd Lickliter at Iowa in his office. And Barry Collier at Nebraska. Thad Matta is the only Butler coach who has been able to replicate hia success elsewhere.

I think Stevens will stay, like Few at Gonzaga. And why not? You're paid decently, and your program is set up for year after year success. What would be better about a job at a floundering major program like Iowa, St. John's or, oh yeah, Indiana?

 

You need to remember who we're talking about.

Also, outside of Veasley, that Butler team returns everyone important next year. Depending on their nonconference schedule, they could have another 30+ win season and an even higher seed.

 

Salary, facilities, resources, ego, etc., etc., etc. There are a million reasons. I'm not even convinced Few is making the right decision. After all, we still haven't seen Gonzaga in the Final Four.

My answer to the cautionary Todd Lickliter tale would be someone like Gary Darnell, who chose to stay at Western Michigan to build a football powerhouse when he was the hot mid-major coaching prospect, and was fired a few years later because he couldn't sustain it.

 

Warning....Butler basketball rant ahead:

I live in Indianapolis and I'm sick and tired of hearing about how Butler is the second coming of Hoosiers. That was a great story back in 2003 when Darnell Archey was raining in 3-pointers all over Rick Pitino's head.

I was irritated to no end last night when I received text after text after text from people who have never set foot on Butler's campus nor in Hinkle Fieldhouse all celebrating last night's win.

My wife attended Butler for a time before changing majors and deciding to go someplace cheaper. When she was a student there, and we were dating, we'd go to a few games. Hinkle was empty. EMPTY. And this was after Butler had already gone to the Sweet 16 for the first time. Was Butler not playing the "Butler way" then? Or was it that IU was still good, so all the bandwagon, "basketball brilliant" citizenry of Indianapolis was driving down SR 37 to get their "white boys playing the right way" fix.

Speaking of white boys...I'm sick and tired of hearing from friends and reading about how Butler is doing this with Indiana kids...yadda yadda yadda. Three players in Butler's rotation are from Indiana. THREE! Yes, two of them (Howard and Heyward) are very, very good....and very, very white. But my God folks, this isn't Hoosiers. Did anyone catch the postgame presser last night? The three Butler reps (Veasley, Norad and Mack) were all BLACK GUYS FROM OTHER STATES!!!

Yes, Butler is a small school. Yes, Butler plays in Hinkle Fieldhouse. But stop with the horrific cliches about the Bulldogs being nothing but modern day Jimmy Chitwoods shooting down the big, bad Big East.

OK. End rant...and for the record, I'll be very happy for Butler if they get to the Final Four. I just hope not to have 400 people tell me that I should go running down 46th street with a B painted on my chest because the fighting cornfield boys have knocked off big, bad, black Kansas State.

 

I'll be surprised if Stevens leaves this year. Indianapolis is home. His family and friends are all there. His wife has her own career in Indy as an attorney. Butler may not be paying him millions but he makes a good living. He's not a big ego kind of guy. And he's got a heck of a good team coming back.

Plus I don't think any of the current openings make much sense for him.

There's obviously no guarantee he'll continue to have success at the rate he's been having, but if he hangs on at Butler another year or two, there is a pretty good chance that he's able to move a little farther down the road to Bloomington.

 

Ouch, vonnegutnaked2. But correct on many counts.

Butler is not "Hoosiers." The school made a conscious decision (under the previous president) to use basketball as a means to raise the school's profile -- and why not, with a gem like Hinkle? VN2, you think Hinkle was empty when you went there -- when Joe Sexson had a recruiting budget of $5 and finished 10-18 every year, elementary schools drew more. While Butler, in a midweek game against Youngstown State, is lucky to crack 3,000 or 4,000 in a 10,000-seat arena (downsized from 15,000 a number of years ago), at least rivalry games or Ohio State will fill or nearly fill the place.

Also, attendance took a hit because Barry Collier decided it was time to start charging some major prices for midmajor ball. I can't remember how much ticket prices went up, but it was significant. Butler went from a cheap event you could take your kids to to something you had to think about a little bit before you went.

Also, re: Hoosiers. While Gordon Hayward looks like Rade Butcher, he and Matt Howard in particular could have gone Big Ten. Like Gonzaga, years of sustained success is getting bigger-time recruits -- not the biggest-time, but bigger-time, to consider Butler when they would consider no other Horizon League school.

I'm not sure Butler's attendance will ever match Gonzaga's. Gonzaga pretty much has Spokane to itself. Butler has the Colts, the Pacers, IU, Purdue, Ball State (lot of BSU alums) (oh, and all three of those schools are no more than 60-90 minutes from downtown Indy) and high school -- heck, Indy Car and NASCAR -- competing for the sports dollar. As a relatively small school, Butler isn't going to have the alumni base that IU, Purdue and even Ball State have to help keep numbers up.

VN2, I see your point about some of racism inherent in the talk of Butler's "right way," but on the other hand, if the people of Indianapolis, in the main, loved it so much, you would figure we wouldn't be talking about why Hinkle Fieldhouse isn't filled every night.

 

I've always figured these mid-majors succeed because keep players longer than the one-and-dones that blow up for one year at a big time school and then take off.
You get a team of players who know each other's games, coaching continuity...that stuff pays off in the tournament.

Rule of thumb for coaching moves should be security. If you have to choose between a five year deal at another school and a three year extension staying put - take off. If you're like the UNI guy and get a 10-year deal, stay put.

 

With all due respect - how many of those guys would have been recruited by Syracuse?

Yes, the "Hoosiers" angle is overdone - just like the "smart guy versus dumb jock" shit with Cornell-Kentucky was overdone -- but there is no way in hell they should have beaten the Orange last night and they aren't playing with the same kind of athletes and talent that most of the other schools left are.

So the "little school that could" angle certainly works with regards to them.