The Beautiful

AP
HARTFORD, Conn. -- I remember my first fixed game. It was five seasons ago. In the final minute of a body-bag guarantee matchup in an ACC arena, with the home team up by 14, a player on the home team broke away for a transition layup. But before he could rise to the hoop, players on the bench yelled out. An assistant gave the baseball "safe" sign, which in this context meant "don't score."
The player pulled up, and the offense just stopped. There was time on the game clock, but the 35-second clock ran out and the ball was turned over. The few people left in the stands roared in disbelief. I didn't understand what had happened either, until an assistant coach on the visiting team (who had seen it too) reminded me what the point spread was: 15.5. They call it "shaving points," and we'd witnessed two lopped off with a straight razor.

Or maybe it was a 10 point lead, and the spread was 10.5, and maybe it was six years ago. And it was the Big Ten, maybe. I go to so many games, I lose track. Years have passed, and no players from that game remain in college. The coaching staff of the school in question has turned over twice. The game is forgotten by everybody who played in it or paid to see it, and whatever money changed hands is long since spent.

I'm not being purposely coy, I do have to fudge the details because I've been asked to give a statement before. In January 2006, I wrote a feature article for ESPN.com about sitting in the stands with the late Jerry Falwell as his Liberty Flames played Marist in a non-conference game. The "compliance people" who contacted me didn't want further clarification on how good Jared Jordan was, they were compiling a report, and wanted me to provide a greater context for a specific passage I wrote.

As the crowd cheered, Falwell turned to a sweatshirted teenage boy seated with friends across the aisle.

"Can you make that play Blair just made, son?"

It was Matt Dunton, son of Liberty coach Randy Dunton. Matt is a junior point guard for local Brookville High who dropped 28 points in his game the other night.

"Yes sir, I can," came the respectful reply.

Falwell beckoned him over, summoned him close. He wrapped the young man's hand in his.

"I hope you consider coming to LU," the master recruiter whispered. "We've got a place for you."

Matt Dunton never ended up playing Division I college basketball, Jerry Falwell died soon thereafter, and there was no NCAA investigation. But back then, my story triggered the "potential impermissible contact" button. I reported that both Dunton and Falwell were smiling, fully cognizant of the man with the notebook and tape recorder next to them, and that it was clearly a joke between two people who clearly knew each other well.

If I ever did get another call or a request to be a see-something say-something snitch, I'd simply reply, "Why don't you do it?" Most of the games I go to, there are a few journalists, maybe a league official or two, and occasionally an officials observer taking notes. The only reminder of the national governing body is usually the Respect: It's the name of the game banner hanging in the corner with the blue-disc logo.

Had there been a trained NCAA observer at that game, they would have seen exactly what I did. But there's nobody on site to keep an eye on every single 5,500 Division I games that occur each year, nobody dropping in randomly on practices to watch how they are run. If there were preemptive measures, maybe there would be no Binghamton or Coastal Carolina. Maybe there would be a chilling effect.

But that's not the way NCAA justice works. It's not oversight, it's aftersight. There are no patrol officers on the street, but plenty of after-the-fact detectives who demand paperwork and assemble patchwork pasts, usually years later. There is no preventative aspect with this approach, and so programs are free to cheat until they get caught. And not very many get caught.

NCAA men's college basketball has a real problem, and it's not barbecue nights or telephone calls or drugs or a $20 bill for the winner of a shooting contest in a closed practice. It's not just Toledo that's been doing it. I know there are others on press row who have seen it too, but it's easier to break stories about technicalities not covered by federal law, and I probably have less to lose than most on the row do. Besides, being McGruff the Crime Dog really isn't part of a journalist's job description anyway.

There is so much about this sport in its current state that is ugly and twisted. That night, and others like it, strengthened my resolve to focus on the good in Our Game, and cling to the tattered idea of a Beautiful Season, because I love basketball so much. It's been difficult to be positive, because there is so much soul-crushing negative all around. But lately, patience has been rewarded. I didn't know it, but we were all waiting for Butler.

* * *
Analysis has failed you, it's failed us all. It didn't warn anybody that the Bulldogs were breaking through last season, and it certainly didn't prepare us for the idea that the second verse would be same as the first.

The Way, Butler's Way (a/k/a George Mason's Way, and originally Dick Bennett's Non-Negotiables), doesn't account for things like rebounds, ball control or shot selection. There are no analyst catch-alls like "clutch," "grit" or even "magic," whatever that is. These things can be broken down further to their base elements, and there The Way can be found. Defense = passion + unity. Balanced offense is a function of sacrifice and servanthood to a team concept. You try to win with humility and lose with thankfulness.

Maybe in the future, in large part thanks to Butler, teams with central philosophies will thrive. Conventional wisdom will be written in this language, this underlying source code. Teams and players and coaches might someday be judged based on their adherence to a philosophy, not a general statistical standard. Perhaps this will be a step in the direction of poets reclaiming the game from the geeks, in a sport that's long since had all the poetry beaten out of it.

Unity: [8] Butler 60 [9] Old Dominion 58

It will go down in history as a game with a great buzzer-beater, but it's important to remember that this was a great and close game between two strong teams: 21 lead changes, and neither side was ever ahead by more than six. Still, it was a game of runs, like Garrett Butcher's scoring flurry off the bench, ODU's 6-0 return run, and the seven minutes the Monarchs went without a field goal -- it all added up to the final.

ODU's primary strength all season was rebounding, whether measured by either margin and accumulation (37 per game) or percentage (59.4, best in the nation). Butler held them exactly even by swarming the glass on misses, despite foul trouble by "Glue Sticks" Matt Howard and Andrew Smith; no Bulldog had more than six boards. That stat is shown in visual terms by the game's final image: nearly the whole team crowding the paint in the final second, all in position to tip in any miss. It happened to be Howard who did it.

Accountability: [8] Butler 71 [1] Pittsburgh 70

"We're not a better team than Old Dominion or Pittsburgh," said Brad Stevens after Butler dispatched the Southeast Region's top seed. "We just had the ball last." Butler's head coach added a sixth pillar to Bennett's original five, and Shelvin Mack didn't shirk accountability for the inexplicable midcourt foul on Gilbert Brown that set up the bizarre final sequence. "I think if it's a foul, it should be called a foul no matter if it's 0.2 seconds on the clock or 39 minutes on the clock," he told the media as people outside argued about whether the foul should have been called at all, in that late-game situation. "The game is played for a full 40 minutes, and it should be reffed for a full 40 minutes."

It's easy to say that after a win, but there's no question that Mack would have said the same thing if the Bulldogs' season had ended in a loss that day. Two games later in New Orleans, late in the game, there was an errant Florida pass that glanced off a Butler player and allowed the Gators to maintain possession. Howard raised his hand. "Naw, it was off me," Mack said.

Passion: [8] Butler 61 [4] Wisconsin 54

The central what-if of Butler's season: what if Gordon Hayward had stayed in school? He didn't, and Stevens transferred many of his minutes to a sophomore project center who played sparingly over two-thirds of Butler's games as a freshman. Andrew Smith never got off the bench that much during the Final Four run (though he did play key minutes in the Kansas State game), and he was inserted in the starting lineup before his body and mind were truly ready for it. He played well against size-challenged teams, but often committed ball-handling blunders that made Butler fans howl in despair.

In the Wisconsin game, Smith became a Bulldog legend. Early in the second half, with Butler well ahead after an overwhelming burst of first-half energy, he went down to the floor hard. He tripped on a Wisconsin player's foot while chasing a rebound, and he screamed in pain as he was taken from the floor. For the next 15 minutes, with his ankle taped up, he ran zig-zag patterns in the tunnels. And then, in a Willis Reed/Larry Bird moment, he ran back out on the court. The Bulldogs were yet to face the final Badger push, but with an off-the-canvas, never-give-up moment like that, there was no way they were going to be stopped.

Indy Star

Servanthood: [8] Butler 74 [2] Florida 71 (OT)

"Servanthood is knowing your role and sacrificing as needed to make your teammates better," Dick Bennett's son Tony once explained. "It's a key element of team unity and greatness. It involves having a servant's mentality when it comes to your team. Will you truly give of yourself to make your team better?" Sometimes a servant's mentality involves sitting on the bench a lot while more experienced players do the job. Between January 7 and the Florida game, freshman Crishawn Hopkins (the Bulldog who most closely resembles Stephen "Flash" Curry) played seven minutes. The four he played against the Gators helped change the game at a crucial time; without them, the game would almost surely be lost.

Butler, both Final Four versions, transcends all that is ugly and infested about Our Game, and they've done so with a replicable template that's available to anyone. I'd like to believe that this team is timeless, that you could transport it to any era, and that it could find a way to exert its formula on any opposition and win any game, anywhere at any time.

I've been on one side of several conversations this week about the idea that maybe Butler is "saving" college basketball. I don't think we'll know for a while exactly how much they are. Now it's up to others to be the next adopters of The Way, and push back against the darkness too.

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