Butler in the Final Four

So I've been following the NCAA Tournament the last few weeks pretty religiously. I love college basketball so much that I even printed out brackets for the lesser tournaments: the NIT, the CBI, and the collegeinsider.com Tournament. But I won't bore you with details of those tournaments (the NIT is plenty, we don't need two even more watered-down fields with teams that can fight to be the 98th best team in the country). I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games here in Salt Lake City this past weekend. It was a pretty penny for a poor college student to attend, but I figured that there aren't always chances to see games this deep in the Tournament right here in my backyard. Butler upsetting Syracuse on Thursday was an awesome game, but somehow that paled in comparison to the Xavier-Kansas State game later that night. Xavier pulled even at the end of regulation by making three free throws when K-State fouled them on a three and forced double-overtime with an insanely deep three by Jordan Crawford. Unfortunately K-State won. Yesterday's game was really cool, though, with Butler holding off a late Wildcats rally and advancing to the Final Four in their home city of Indianapolis. Gordon Hayward really impressed me. He was solid on both ends of the floor and made some big shots throughout. He had a sick crossover in the first half followed by a three-pointer that was just amazing. Butler doesn't have all the flashy names and stuff, but it was very evident to me that they play hard. I thought their defense on Kansas State's dynamic guard tandem of Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente was just terrific -- neither of them really had much room to breathe. Some blame the late double overtime game on Thursday for the K-State Saturday letdown, but not me. Butler clearly had solid film study and knew when and where these guys were coming off screens and hounded them all afternoon. And it's really cool that a so-called mid-major is now in the Final Four. These schools play basketball, too, and in the case of Butler, do so at a very high level. This was no fluke. These guys are the real deal as evidenced by them beating a 1 and 2 seed in consecutive games. I wouldn't be surprised to see them win a game or two next weekend either. And if any of you ever get a chance to attend a big-time sporting even like this, I would highly recommend it. The atmosphere was electric all weekend at the Energy Solutions Arena (aka the Delta Center) and the fans were treated to three outstanding games. Definitely worth the money and it's something I'll remember for a long time.