[Bumped. Originally posted Sunday at 1:41 PM. -ed.]
From what I’ve seen on Twitter, SportsCenter and elsewhere, the “expert” consensus appears to be that Duke simply has too many offensive weapons for even Butler’s excellent defense to contain. The same people who never believed Butler could make it this far, and who still fundamentally don’t understand how they’ve managed to do so, are now confidently predicting that Monday’s championship game will, at last, be the Bulldogs’ waterloo.
It goes without saying that we’ve heard this all before: Butler can’t beat Syracuse, Butler won’t beat Kansas State, Butler is doomed against Michigan State and its superhuman coach, etc. etc. At some point — like, say, after wins over the Big East champ, the Big Ten co-champ and the Big XII runner-up, not to mention the AP Coach of the Year (Boeheim) and the consensus Coach of the Tournament (Izzo) — you’d think that people would perhaps stop doubting the Dawgs. But no.
Alas, this lack of faith, even in the face of clear evidence that Butler is for real, isn’t actually surprising. Particularly when it comes to mid-majors — a label that, yes, does still mean something, and does still apply to Butler — the “experts” never learn. This is true in football and it’s true in basketball. No matter how many times conventional wisdom is proven wrong, it always reasserts itself almost immediately, with no sense of self-consciousness on the part of its purveyors about all the prior times they’ve been completely wrong.
Most irritatingly (and yet oh-so-typically), I’ve heard folks trying to downplay the Bulldogs’ accomplishments to date: they beat Syracuse without Onuaku, they beat Michigan State without Lucas, blah blah blah. To which I say: Bull freakin’ s**t. If, say, Kansas had beaten Michigan State and Syracuse on its way to the national title game, no one would be saying these things. These sorts of excuses are only ever made for major-conference teams that lose to mid-majors.
But perhaps the larger issue, in this particular case, is the way each team played yesterday. Against West Virginia, Duke played about as well as it’s capable of playing. Meanwhile, against Michigan State, Butler played about as poorly as it’s capable of playing without losing — and certainly far worse than it’s played throughout the rest of the tournament. It should be obvious that neither team can necessarily be expected to duplicate its Saturday performance on Monday. Yet because most sportswriters have the attention span of a 2-year-old, they’re assuming just that: Duke will play as well as it did Saturday, Butler will play as poorly as it did in its close escape against an MSU team putting on an equally substandard performance, and so of course the Blue Devils will beat the Bulldogs in a walk.
If those underlying assumptions about the teams’ respective levels of performance, relative to what they’re capable of, happen to prove true (which is possible!), then of course the prediction will also be correct. But there’s no particular reason to assume anything of the sort. If anything, the law of averages might tend to suggest that Duke is likely to come back to earth and play worse than it did Saturday, while Butler is likely to play better. If one makes that alternative set of assumptions, the picture looks a lot rosier for the hometown team.
So… will Butler beat Duke? I don’t know. I’m not making a prediction either way, though I suppose it’s probably a somewhat less than 50-50 shot. Can Butler beat Duke? Abso-freakin’-lutely, and anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn’t been paying attention.
I’m just wishing I had submitted a “silly bracket” now… Both my parents went to Butler, so I was thinking about submitting a Butler for the championship bracket… But then I would have had to have picked winners for all those other games, which is a total pain.
When a sportsy pundit tells you that Butler can’t stay with Duke, they’re not trying to educate you; arguably the line contains all the information about the relative chances of the two teams. Rather, they’re trying to say something that will make them look smart, especially if their predicted outcome occurs.
As a famous example of this, consider the pundits who say stuff like “The World Series will be close, but ultimately the Yankees will prove too strong for the Phillies and win in 7”. Practically, this translates into Posada getting a lucky clutch hit in the sixth inning of game 7 and Rivera slamming the door. The writer doesn’t acknowledge that, of course. If the series is close, and the Yankees appear to be too strong, you will think the writer smart.
As regards tomorrow’s game, of course Butler has a chance; they’re 7 point underdogs, not 70. However, Duke is surely better than Butler under normal circumstances, and tomorrow is anything but normal circumstances.
While it may challenge Whelliston’s cognitive dissonance, Butler went through a hideous 10+-minute field-goal-less stretch in the clutch Saturday, even though MSU wasn’t doing anything special defensively (Butler ran their offense and got their looks). Butler’s wickedly cold shooting was due either to:
a) spectacularly bad luck or
b) the moment was too big for them.
If the answer was b, then Monday night could be fairly ugly, as Duke is a lot stouter competition than banged-up MSU, and the “moment” Monday night is much much bigger than Saturday. We shall see. But its ridiculous to decry those analysts attempting to develop their brand by getting behind explanation b for Butler’s unfathomably awful shooting in the second half Saturday.
Even Bally doesn’t buy the bad luck explanation.
LOL!
I’ve been regretting that I decided to be “reasonable” with my picks this year. Although I didn’t specifically contemplate picking Butler, it’s very possible that I would have, at least to reach the Final Four, if I’d used the bracket philosophy that I used to use back in the early- and mid-2000s (when I was constantly picking Gonzaga to reach the Final Four, win the title and whatnot). Butler was sort of like this year’s Gonzaga. Except they actually followed through and did it.
One of the paralegals in my office entered a bracket for her dog in her family’s pool, based on mascot names of course. The dog picked Butler — the Bulldogs — to win it all. If Butler wins tomorrow night, the dog wins the pool.
If I may be the Blue Devils’ advocate for a moment, I’d like to make two points that strike against the grain of your argument:
1) Butler has beaten more talented teams, but it won those games because it has enough experience and team-togetherness to turn its sub-elite talent into giant-killers. Kansas is stocked with next-level players, but Bill Self — like Roy Williams — relies on overwhelming with talent vs. developing a cadre of experienced, grizzled vets that operate as a smart, fundamentally fine-tuned team. Michigan State is less talented and sustained key injuries, but they are well-coached, and they gave Butler a heckuva game. Duke, for all intents and purposes, is Butler and Michigan State combined but with McDonald’s All-American talent. Coach K’s team can out-Butler Butler as well as bang with the big boys. Their kenpom stats don’t lie — Duke is the most efficient offense and the third-most efficient defense. This is like Boise State going up against Florida, and while Broncos over Gators would be a feel-good story that all of us would root for, the reality is the Gators would crush them.
2) The fact that all the experts are picking Duke signifies nothing except that they are going with the odds. If Duke is favored by 6-8 points and would theoretically win 7 out of 10 games head-to-head, the number of people who pick Duke in a one-off is going to be more like 90-95%. Sure we all know Butler can win, but nobody’s going to actually pick them. If it was an NBA-style seven-game series, perhaps you might get some 4-2 or 4-3 predictions, but one of the reasons Vegas does point spreads is because when one team is favored by some level of probability, the human picks will not be similarly linear, they will be more logarithmic.
I was LOLing at Dane, but “Even Bally doesn’t buy the bad luck explanation” is pretty funny too.
But we’ll see. Sometimes teams just go cold at horrible moments. I’m not convinced Butler’s problem was an emotional freakout. I don’t deny it’s possible, but I’m not willing to assume it’s true based on yesterday alone. Tomorrow should provide ample evidence to settle the issue.
I will say this, though. Butler’s run has definitely been a rebuttal of Whelliston’s oft-stated thesis that sub-Red-Line teams “have to play 40 great minutes” to beat the big boys. In at least its last three games, Butler has had an opportunity (or opportunities) to put the game away, has failed to do so, has almost let the win slip through its fingers, and has managed to win anyway.
Then again, Butler is just much, much better than most sub-Red-Line teams. If Murray State had beaten Butler in the second round, the Racers would surely have needed to play 40 great minutes to beat Syracuse or Kansas State or Michigan State. Butler, not so much.
They’ll probably need at least 38 or 39 tomorrow, though. 30 certainly won’t be enough again.
You’re mixing up your mid-majors, AML. Northern Iowa beat Kansas; Butler beat Syracuse and Kansas State. 🙂
it’d make for the best ending to the best tournament ever…
Finally after 62 games, Cinderella stories and buzzer beating heroics we finally have our final set.. and who in their right mind had Duke vs Butler… man Butler is such a great story but they definitely have their hands full (not that they haven’t done it before).
This game is a toss-up though the way Butler is playing and if you want a in depth preview and prediction go to: http://www.lionsdenu.com/march-madness-2010-national-championship-preview-prediction-vs-butler/ … I really hope Butler can do it, but its going to be SOOO tough.
Singler, Scheyer and Smith are so good, they score so many points in Dukes victory.. at one point they had 57 of the Blue Devils 69 points.. Insane, I can’t wait for the madness to begin Monday night but I am not looking forward to it ending… best tourney EVER!
Er, yes. I blame it on too much sun this weekend.
Syracuse is Kansas but slightly more flawed and without a key player. Kansas State is a team not too dissimilar to Butler — they largely got by this year on decent talent but good experience and great effort. And again, Butler needed a Kansas State burnt out from that epic Xavier game. A lot had to happen right for Butler to get this far.
I also think the Duke-WVU game went a long way toward puncturing the myth that Duke gets protected by the zebras. Some of the officiating in that game was downright laughable, but it didn’t raise much ire because Duke was comfortably in the lead the last three-quarters of the game.
Picking a champion (and attempting to develop your sportsy pundity brand) has a lot to do with finding the scenario that gives you the best chance to seem knowledgeable. Returning to whether the moment tomorrow night is too big for Butler, that’s a moot point. We’ll know in 24 hours.
If the moment is not too big, and Butler pulls off the upset, its going to be one of those all-time great, Holy-Shit-Jimmy-V-running-around-looking-for-someone-to-hug moments. You as a fan will remember it for a long time, remember where you were, and you will process the memory privately. That some random pundit predicted it will have no impact on that memory.
By contrast, if the klieglights are too bright for Butler, we will know relatively quickly, and there’s a chance that the final two hours of the 2.5 hour broadcast will alternate between “Where is Coach K’s place in history?” and thinly-veiled condescension about what a nice story Butler is (but couldn’t they give a better show in the biggest game?) In that case, if you went out on a limb and said Butler would win, in the aftermath of the Dead Zone of 2+ hours of realizing they wouldn’t, you could pay a reputation price for that.
IOW, picking Butler is a prediction with marginal personal upside and significant downside. Its fun to do, as long as it doesn’t cost you anything.
So I’m picking Butler, to a large extent because no one cares.
I’m certainly no expert, but I fail to see how Butlers game against Michigan State this tournament has anything to say about how a sub Red line team must play in order to win. Butler was a #5 seed; so was MSU. Based on the seeds, weren’t we *supposed* to assume it would be a close game? How does the red line come into play against two equal seeds?
MSU has certainly been a strong team over the past decade; 6 Final Four appearances in the past 12 years is something for Izzo to be quite proud of. But objectively, this year, Butler is much more of an underdog against Duke than it was against MSU, if it even legitimately was an underdog against MSU. It seems to me that a fairer comparison would be how well Butler had to play against Syracuse or Kansas Stat — #1 and #2 seeds that it defeated — than against MSU, a fellow #5.
Hmm. Further poking about on the net gives me the impression that apparently the Red Line refers to a conference’s monetary expenditures on basketball (or athletics in general), not seeding. If this is the case (which is not intuitively obvious to an outsider like me), then my previous post is relatively irrelevant, as I was arguing against a point no one had tried to make.