RTC Senior Editor John Stevens covered the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games in New Orleans for us last week. In addition to watching Butler emerge as the Southeast Region champion, he also had time to check out a little bit of the city. Occasionally on RTC we like to get out of our comfort zone and write up a travelogue of our experiences for your amusement. He’s home and (we think) fully recovered from the both the amazing basketball he saw and his time in the Big Easy, so here is Part I of John’s sumbission from New Orleans.

If you’re looking forward to the destination, one of the great feelings a person can have, for my money, is the series of moments right before a journey starts. Nothing screams of possibilities more than a plane awaiting its turn on a runway, an empty passport, or a camera memory card with no photos. But when RTC’s founder, correspondent wrangler and assignement hander-outer called me to talk about where I’d be traveling and what games I could possibly cover in the post-season, I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.

John Makes His First Approach To the Quarter -- It Went Downhill From Here

I covered many games in many locales for RTC this season, and frankly, I was tired. I also remembered how I did the same thing last season, and how fatigued I was after the 10-hour car trip to the Big 12 Tournament last year. It was a total blast to cover. I loved every single moment of being there, and I can still taste the Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue. I spent way too much time in the Power and Light District. ButI always spend too much money and push my poor automobile too hard (nothing like an engine rebuild around Christmastime!). By the time I got off the phone with him, though, my defenses had been proven futile. He landed quick jabs by telling me that I was signed up for the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis, the First Four in Dayton, and the Cleveland sub-regional.

Then he finished me with this right cross: “And…you’re also penciled in for the regional in New Orleans.”

As if having a media pass to the nation’s greatest sporting event in four different locations wasn’t enough, I had the opportunity to go to one of the country’s coolest cities. I’d always wanted to go to New Orleans. He knew I couldn’t resist that, the dirty dog that he is. I had more fun covering the games in Indianapolis, Dayton, and Cleveland than I thought I would, and that made me anticipate New Orleans even more. My flight to the Crescent City was at 6:00 AM on Thursday, the day of the Sweet 16 games. I barely slept the night before out of excitement. To me, the night and even the minutes before such a journey like this starts are every bit as good as being on the trip itself.

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The Road Ends Here, states the signs on the Reliant Center and around the city of Houston this weekend, so we think we’re in the right place.  The unlikeliest of Final Fours will commence on Saturday evening, so it’s time for our game analysis and picks.  Check back Monday morning for the final edition. 

#8 Butler vs. #11 VCU – National Semifinal (at Houston, TX) – 6:09 pm ET on CBS.

The New Krzyzewski is Back in the Final Four.

 Butler is back in the Final Four but what they see on the other side of the court may look familiar. VCU is playing Cinderella this season, the same shoes the Bulldogs filled last year in Indianapolis. The Rams have dismantled four of their five NCAA Tournament opponents during their improbable tournament run, including Kansas in their most recent game. Shaka Smart’s team has increased its level of play by a wide margin in this tournament and will look to “Shaka the World,” as one VCU t-shirt says, in Houston. As if they haven’t already. VCU is a team that didn’t even expect to be in the field, choosing not to watch the Selection Show three weeks ago. Yet here they are, two wins away from a national title with the national spotlight squarely on them. To get to Monday night and a date with either Connecticut or Kentucky, the Rams need to keep doing what they’ve been doing so well in this tournament: shoot the three, defend, and force turnovers. Remarkably, VCU has been outrebounded in four of their five NCAA Tournament games. USC was the only team that couldn’t pull down more boards than the Rams, a stunning fact given how far they’ve advanced. How have they done it? VCU has shot 43.8% from deep behind Bradford Burgess and company, held four of their five opponents under 40% shooting and recorded a +23 turnover margin (+4.6 per game). By contrast, Butler is in this position thanks to clutch plays by experienced players such as Shelvin Mack and a fantastic tactician on the sideline. Brad Stevens’ bunch has won four tournament games by a total of 13 points, three of them by six total points. To beat VCU, Butler must defend the three well and protect the basketball. They’ve done a nice job of that in the NCAAs thus far, allowing only 30.4% from deep in tournament play while committing 11 turnovers per game over the same stretch. That 30.4% mark against the three ball would rank #13 nationally if it were a season average, giving you a strong indication of just how well they’ve defended recently. As it is, Butler ranks #65 in three point defense at 32.4% on the season. Both clubs rely on the trey for a large portion of their offense so expect many deep shots to be launched. The key defensive matchup will be Butler’s Ronald Nored against VCU point guard Joey Rodriguez. Nored made it a habit of frustrating opposing guards in last year’s magical run to the title game and he’s doing it again this year. If Nored can get in Rodriguez’s grill and disrupt the flow of the VCU offense, open three-point looks may become harder to come by. Rodriguez averages 5.1 APG but the Rams could grind to a halt if he is locked up by Butler’s ace defender. It is unlikely that VCU will enjoy a significantly positive turnover margin against a Bulldogs team that protects the ball fairly well and even more unlikely that the Rams will outrebound Butler. Therefore, Nored may hold the key that opens the door for Butler to advance to their second consecutive championship game. VCU, specifically Burgess and Brandon Rozzell, has to keep making threes to have a chance to win this game. On the interior, Matt Howard and Jamie Skeen will battle it out. Skeen is more athletic but these forwards have similar games. They can score in the paint or from the perimeter but Howard is more physical. Skeen hasn’t shown the aggressiveness needed to battle junkyard dog players like Howard in the post at times this season, instead relying on his athleticism and finesse to overcome his opponents’ physicality. He must be able to bang with Howard and hopefully, for VCU’s sake, get him in early foul trouble. On paper this looks like a very close game. We don’t expect anything different but the edge has to go to Butler. Experience matters a lot when you get this deep into the tournament and the Bulldogs have obviously been here before. Given the way last year’s season ended for them, they are probably playing with a chip on their shoulder as well. Butler has all the motivation in the world to get to the title game while, subconsciously, VCU is just happy to have made it this far. By no means are we saying VCU doesn’t care about getting to Monday night (they do), but we’re worried about how they’ll react in a tight situation down the stretch of a close game with the eyes of the world focused on them. Butler has been through this drill last year and during the tournament this season, plus they have tough-as-nails players like Mack and Howard. Add in Stevens, the master strategist, and you have the recipe for success in a national semifinal. We wouldn’t be surprised if VCU wins, but we can’t pick against Butler here in what looks to be a favorable matchup for the Bulldogs.

The RTC Certified Pick: Butler.

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Throughout the NCAA Tournament, we’ll be providing you with the daily chatter from around the webosphere relating to what’s going on with the teams still playing.

Butler

Connecticut

• Much has been made of Kemba Walker‘s spectacular season and Jeremy Lamb‘s breakout in the tournament, but Jamal Coombs-McDaniel and Alex Oriakhi share a bond that goes back to before Walker even set foot in campus.
• Houston has been good to UConn during Jim Calhoun‘s tenure, as the city was home to Jake Voskuhl, Emeka Okafor and Hasheem Thabeet before the three players made their respective trips up to Storrs. The Huskies are looking for Houston to give them another great memory.
• Youth will dominate Saturday’s semifinal between Connecticut and Kentucky, with a probable six freshmen combined in the two teams’ starting lineups.
• If UConn is the last team standing in Houston, one question sure to be asked surrounds Jim Calhoun’s future with the university. And if the end of his coaching career is nigh, who might succeed him? Former Husky player and current assistant Kevin Ollie might lead that list.
• More hardware rolls in for Kemba Walker, who was named the recipient of the Bob Cousy Award as college basketball’s top point guard, beating out Nolan Smith, Norris Cole, Jordan Taylor and Jimmer Fredette.

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It’s obvious why everyone loves March Madness, but why do people particularly love it when schools like Butler and VCU make runs to the Sweet 16 and, in this year’s edition, the Final Four? For the same reason everyone loves the early-round upsets. It’s the perception of David beating Goliath, the idea that some unranked team from a little college nestled in the woods in middle America can knock off a squad long on hype and McDonald’s All-Americans from some Power Six conference team. Kentucky and Connecticut may have the majority of partisan fans in Houston this weekend, and we’re sure Butler and VCU will be represented as well as they can be, but any unaffiliated fans inside of Reliant Stadium and watching at home will be rooting for those little guys. One of the hottest topics we’ve heard on sports talk radio and read about in numerous outlets since the incredible wins by Butler and VCU over the weekend is how great it is that two small schools made the Final Four and that one of them is guaranteed to play for the national championship.

Wait…VCU? A “small” school? Maybe we need to redefine our terms.

(Dollar amounts from Basketball State, and are as of 2010.)

Check out that table. If you look at total enrollment, VCU is the biggest school in the Final Four. It’s the only school with more than 30,000 students, and of all the athletic revenues they brought in last year, they spend the second most money by percentage on men’s basketball of the four remaining teams. Butler, as you can see, spends the highest percentage of its athletic revenue on our game. So what exactly are people talking about when they use terms like “small school” and “little guy” to describe programs like VCU’s? What makes a school small in a basketball sense? How can the biggest school left in the Tournament be…a mid-major?

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Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC contributor. In this weekly piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball. This week, Jesse continues his alienation of Kentucky fans, suggests Mr. Sullinger calm it down for a little bit, and wants D-Will to get his props.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…..watching 40 minutes of North Carolina-Kentucky and coming away fairly certain that it was the highest quality of play we’ve witnessed this season. Guard play, NBA talent down low, spurts both ways, a tie game with a few minutes left…wow. There’s no doubt in my mind that those were the two best teams left in the tournament, even though that doesn’t mean the Wildcats will bring home the crown.

I LOVED…..that Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart had to say that “this Final Four banner will stay.” Stay, as in not be taken away like the other two banners that John Calipari has – excuse me, HAD – on his resume. Quite a statement, that your athletic director needs to accentuate that point right after the big win. Yes, I can’t stand Cal. Sue me.

Could the Devils Have Won It All Without Him?

I LOVED…..trying to decipher the Kyrie Irving situation. Common sense said getting him back anywhere near full strength put this Duke team right back in the title picture. But after Nolan Smith struggled in the shocker against Arizona (eight points, six turnovers), you found yourself balancing the effects (Irving had 28 points). The bottom line was summed up perfectly by ESPN’s Jay Bilas. Is there any way that you justify not playing the nation’s best PG? No. And do they win the title without Irving? No way.

I LOVED…..how NC State keeps holding out hope of being a big time program again. Maybe it’s just because I spent four years in the state, but the kooks in Raleigh crack me up every time. With the Wolfpack job open, I’ve already heard “rumors” about Arizona coach Sean Miller and VCU coach Shaka Smart in connection with the job. Who in their right mind would want to go there, especially over a job like Arizona, which is a stay-there-till-you-die destination (weather, history, recruiting, etc.)? State fans are crazy, and any coach who wants to follow Sidney Lowe is crazier. If Smart lives up to his name, he’ll steer clear.

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Throughout the NCAA Tournament, we’ll be providing you with the daily chatter from around the webosphere relating to what’s going on with the teams still playing.

Butler

Connecticut

• Jim Calhoun warns that the shine will eventually wear off of prodigious coaches like Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens. One element both coaches will have to consider in potential moves to higher-profile schools down the line is whether they want to take on the balance of increased scrutiny and higher expectations.
• The Huskies returned to campus for a couple days to recharge their batteries, but passers-by on campus are still as excited as they were on Saturday. The team arrives in Houston Wednesday night, and its rock star status can’t go to the players’ heads if they want to succeed.
• Patrick Sellers, a former UConn assistant, left the staff in the wake of the NCAA’s investigation of the program last May. Now coaching in China, Sellers remains pumped for his former employer, and, cleared by the NCAA, can seek work at the Division-I level if he wishes.
• Calhoun believes there are no great teams in college basketball this season, with which we agree, but gives a reason with which we disagree. Calhoun insists that the transience of college basketball’s top players hurts the game, but without those players, even if they only stay one season, the game would be far less interesting.

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1. For most of the past two weeks we have seen Seth Davis manning a CBS/TNT/TBS/TruTV NCAA Tournament desk, but in between covering games for the four networks he has also had some time to write his regular “Hoops Thoughts” column. In this week’s column he delves into two rather controversial topics–further expansion of the NCAA Tournament and whether VCU deserved an at-large bid. There are plenty of other good things in there, but we assume that these two topics will generate the most debate.
2. Jalen Rose has been in the news quite a bit over the past month as the result of the “Fab 5” documentary he helped produce and the comments he made about how he felt about the Duke team that they lost to their freshman year. The first prominent Blue Devil to respond was Grant Hill in a New York Times op-ed piece and now Mike Krzyzewski has chimed in calling the remarks insulting to all African-American students while taking a shot at the Fab 5’s  “legacy”. We are sure that Rose is probably ignoring these comments now, but what he cannot ignore is the DUI charges against him stemming from an incident on March 11th (the day before the documentary was released). We are surprised that this didn’t come out earlier and that Rose didn’t tone down his rhetoric after this happened as it was bound to become public at some point.
3. Jordan Williams has decided to test the NBA waters by entering his name, but not signing with an agent. The Maryland sophomore does not appear to be a lock to even be drafted so we expect that he will be back with Gary Williams next season joining an intriguing incoming freshman class that should help put the Terrapins back in the NCAA Tournament. Of course, this isn’t a certainty as we have seen college players make worse decisions.
4. While most of the rumors about coaching moves have been false alarms (including the idiotic Bob Knight-to-Purdue rumor started by Jason Whitlock) one that has been gaining quite a bit of momentum is current Boilermaker coach Matt Painter heading to Missouri. The two sides reportedly met yesterday in Orlando where Painter was on vacation and Painter will reportedly announce his decision by noon today. Based on the figures that have been reported Painter would get a slight pay raise (the $1.3 M to $2 M per year that has been reported ignores the fact that Painter got $1.9 M this year after factoring in performance-based incentives) so we are not exactly sure what would compel Painter to leave Purdue in the fertile recruiting territory of Indiana for Missouri, which is quite frankly a decent sized step down in terms of basketball prestige. Unless the difference in salary is more significant than has been indicated we don’t see a great reason for Painter to leave Missouri.
5. Finally, we prefer not to link to “pay” articles, but sometimes we feel compelled to do so. In this case, John Gasaway of Basketball Prospectus takes a look at Butler and attempts to answer the question of whether they are good or just lucky as they are on the verge of returning to the national championship game for a second consecutive year.

David Ely is an RTC contributor.

What We Learned

Ladies And Gentlemen, Your 2010 CBI Champions! (AP/E. Gay)

Throughout the regular season a lot was made about the lack of an elite team in college basketball. For about a month Duke fit the bill, but then Kyrie Irving hurt his toe and the Blue Devils lost their aura of invincibility. As the season wore on, Ohio State and Kansas emerged as the top two teams in the nation. They had all the elements of an elite squad — size, skill, experience and NBA talent — but no one would have confused the Buckeyes and Jayhawks with, say, 2009 North Carolina, 2007 Florida, or 2001 Duke. This year’s versions of KU and OSU were very good teams, but neither was at that usual level of “great” that at least one team achieves during a season. The NCAA tournament certainly has reinforced the good-but-not-great trend in college hoops this year. For the first time ever, there won’t be a single #1 or #2 seed represented in the Final Four, and the group of #3 Connecticut, #4 Kentucky, #8 Butler and #11 VCU comprises the highest combined seeding of any quartet in Final Four history. The games from the past two weeks show just how little difference there was from #1-20. Kentucky and Arizona looked every bit as talented as Ohio State and Duke, and neither victory felt like an upset. Yes, Butler needed a number of breaks to go its way to advance to the Final Four, but time and time again the Bulldogs made the necessary plays to win, and they never looked overmatched against any one of their higher seeded opponents.

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Throughout the NCAA Tournament, we’ll be providing you with the daily chatter from around the webosphere relating to what’s going on with the teams still playing.

Butler

Connecticut

• UConn has followed a similar path of peaks and valleys to its opponent on Saturday, Kentucky. Both teams have evolved considerably since squaring off at the Maui Invitational in November. The Huskies’ freshmen have matured at an incredible rate, and Kentucky is feeding off of Brandon Knight and Josh Harrellson more than Terrance Jones, who had the ball most of the time in the early going.
• Kemba Walker was named a first team AP All-American on Monday, joining Jimmer Fredette, JaJuan Johnson, Nolan Smith and Jared Sullinger. A Wooden Award and Final Four MOP award are still in Walker’s sights.
• VCU gets plenty of attention for its improbable run (and should), but how about UConn winning nine postseason games in 19 days to reach the Final Four? This March run from Jim Calhoun‘s squad didn’t look to be in the cards when the season started.
• The UConn women’s team is one win away from matching their male counterparts. The UConn double-dip has been accomplished twice, in 2004 and 2009, and comparing the runs is inevitable for Huskies fans, writes The Hartford Courant‘s Jeff Jacobs.
• At the time of his recruitment, Kemba Walker was considered a backup plan to Brandon Jennings, who spurned UConn and Arizona to spend a season overseas before entering the NBA draft. Jennings is doing well, but second-best has worked out pretty nicely for the Huskies.

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After another weekend of scintillating and shocking NCAA Tournament results, it’s time to check back in with our various correspondents who were in Anaheim, San Antonio, New Orleans and Newark reporting on the games this weekend.

Location: New Orleans, LA
Round: Regional Final
Teams: Florida, Butler
Date: 26 March 2011
Correspondent: John Stevens

To read all the diaries throughout the NCAA Tournament, click here.

There are only two possible options, and either one makes Brad Stevens look like a genius.

Here’s the situation. There are nine and a half minutes left in the Butler/Florida game and the Gators are starting to separate themselves a little. The Butler faithful — many of whom comprise the entire section behind the Bulldogs’ bench and have stood far more than they’ve sat in their seats during the game — haven’t been up for a while, and they’re starting to squirm in those chairs because they can feel it getting out of hand. So naturally, if you’re Brad Stevens, this is the time you saunter down to the end of the bench and put in — who else? — a kid who had scored a grand total of 29 points all season, had only played in 19 of the team’s games, and who averaged less than half an assist. If the sarcasm isn’t coming through, here, what we really mean to say is…are you kidding with this? And yet, what did Crishawn Hopkins do when Stevens tapped him with this most improbable of opportunities? Hit a cutting Matt Howard down the middle for a beautiful assist — immediately contributing more than twice his average in that category — and then hit a huge three, raising his yearly scoring output to 32 points. Sure, he committed a turnover moments later, and he was subbed out, but he changed everything. He provided that lift that comes when a kid who you never expected to come through ends up playing well; when that happens, the crowd gets back into the game and teammates who play the majority of minutes start playing with higher confidence. So, hands up, who predicted Crishawn Hopkins would turn out to be one of the most important players of the NCAA Tournament? When Hopkins sat down after being subbed out, he received a pretty loud ovation from the crowd. In fact, there was only one other player in this region who enjoyed a similar applause when he was removed from his game. It was Jimmer Fredette ending his career.

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