Last year, the Butler Bulldogs made the NCAA title game (and almost won it) somewhat flukily, you might say. They had that big goofy white kid whose size, skill and shooting ability was a mismatch for basically every team in college basketball. Butler rode him, a great defense and a great coach to the title game and almost pulled off what would have been the best thing I had ever witnessed in sports—if only Gordon Hayward (goofy white kid referred to above) would have made that half-court shot to beat Duke. Then, Hayward was drafted. All that Butler had left was the defense and the coach, which isn't bad for a school that size, but surely their success in the coming year would be limited.
Fast forward to the present day. Butler proved everyone right by stumbling into the tournament as an 8 seed and then proceeded to prove everyone wrong by . . . getting to the Final Four?? Wait, what? The FINAL FOUR?!?! Was everybody wrong about this team? No, they weren't. Butler doesn't have the talent to be where they are. The Bulldogs are not big or intimidating physically, and they bypass mean faces and the self-aggrandizing gestures. But they remain the toughest team in college basketball, and that's the major reason you'll be watching them play tomorrow.
The theory that they seem to operate on is something like this: "There's no such thing as 'tough.'"
What I'm about to write may or may not make any sense, but I'm going to write it either way, so it looks like we're going to find out together. I used to get so nervous playing organized basketball that I could barely remember what happened in the game if you asked me. I didn't always play bad. I just played differently than I would in a pickup game, even against equal or greater talent. However, one thing was for sure: I had no chance of hitting a game-winning shot. The nerves might've focused me somewhat during the course of the game, but performing a finesse action amidst a fast-moving sport under pressure was simply not going to happen.
At some point I started thinking, "Why do I play that way?" The answer I came up with was some form of this: I cared too much. “So what does that mean?” I thought. ”Do I need to care less? That can't be right.” Well, it kind of was. The choice was either 1) play too fast but count my points and think about all of the consequences of everything I did in-game DURING the game or 2) use that mental energy to concentrate on actually playing the game and worry about my impact and all the implications of how I played later, if at all. If I caught myself thinking about how I'm playing in-game, that meant I needed to do more in the game, because I shouldn't have that much space for that type of thought. I tried to sacrifice my enjoyment and appreciation of anything I did well for actually doing well. Play increase and immediate-pleasure decrease. Can I explain this in any simpler terms?
Obviously that doesn't work every time for me. I'm not even really very good anyway. But my point is this: that's the type of thinking you need to have if you’re Butler. What is happening? How do we make it work? That's it. That sounds easy, but it's not. Every occurrence has a personal emotional reaction tied to it, whether it's big or small, positive or negative. In the case of the NCAA tournament, the emotional reactions tend to be big. Players often take some of the worst shots POSSIBLE to win the game . . . but the shots go in because the players taking them have seen a similar shot go in in a previous NCAA tournament. Their confidence seems to will the ball in.
Conversely, Kansas isn’t able to make a layup against VCU because they can just feel the upset coming, even though the only reason it's coming is because they feel it. Chicken/egg situation. That game wasn't won by superior talent or a better game plan; it was won by confident players vs. nervous players.
Back to Butler. They're not tough because they're powerful, aggressive or boisterous. They're tough because they don't let anything that doesn't matter affect them. Brain power spent on emotional responses to real-life occurrences is brain power wasted when it comes to sports, and when you win by margins as slim as the ones Butler continues to win by, the only way they could win those games, in my opinion, is if they are the only team that bypasses the emotional waste during the game. Butler does what's necessary. Period.
Am I idealizing this Butler team? Oh, probably. Brad Stevens is my hero . . . but he's my hero for a reason. Butler, as a team, is really smart, pretty skilled and really well coached, but the reason they're here is because they're tough.
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