Butler: It’s the journey that counts

HOUSTON -- Here is what shouldn't happen: That last impressions determine one's final opinion.

We should remember Butler basketball the past two years more for the journey than wretched conclusion. We should celebrate a Horizon League team making two consecutive national championship games more than the abysmal offensive showing Monday evening.

We should view the Bulldogs as hope for all schools who didn't think it possible to reach such heights in today's Bowl Championship Series world of greed, rather than a team that couldn't finish when getting there.

"I think any time you lose it stings, and it's going to sting and you're just competitive by nature, so that's why you feel that way," Butler coach Brad Stevens said shortly after his team fell to Connecticut 53-41 in the NCAA final. "But, you know, the only thoughts going through my mind are for these guys. What they have done is remarkable and can't be overstated. You know, our seniors, what they've given to Butler, the example they have set.

"When you see freshmen in that locker room bawling their eyes out because they know they're not going to get to play with our seniors, you know you have something very special."

We decide a national champion in college football by an unjust, contrived, predictable sham of a process, but even when teams deserving to play for the title are left out each year, those who meet in the BCS championship are almost always sides that could make an argument for being the best team. Each usually has one or no losses and has been ranked among the nation's best most or all of the season.

The argument wasn't that Oregon or Auburn shouldn't be given an opportunity to play for the championship but that Texas Christian deserved the same chance this year.

The argument in football is far more about equality than parity.

It's not that way in basketball.

Its champion is determined through a tournament, and with that comes the possibility that the two best teams won't advance to the final, that a No. 8 seed could maneuver its way through the bracket in impressive fashion, then shoot 18.8 percent in the biggest game on the sport's biggest stage.

That scenario, ironically, is the beauty of it.

It's a system flawed in a way teams such as UConn and Butler can get hot for a few weeks and play longer than some that were better the previous four months, but you know the possibility exists each March. Everyone has the same chance when the field is announced, and if you still don't believe so, lob a call to the campus of Virginia Commonwealth today.

UConn was the best team Monday. It might not have been tonight or Friday or next week. It might not have been had it played one of 50 other teams. But it doesn't have to be.

It won when winning mattered most. It deserves its place atop the college basketball world.

But whoever becomes the next coach at UNLV needs to use Butler as the shining example of what is possible, that if the Bulldogs proved anything these past two Final Fours, it's that no program with a good enough system and players capable of executing it should own any limitations in terms of how far it can go.

"I think you have to have a great coaching staff," Butler senior forward Matt Howard said. "I mean, you have to get players. But when you do, and they all buy in and believe in each other, you can achieve a lot of things."

I have covered countless Final Fours, Super Bowls, BCS championship games, the NBA Finals, the Beijing Olympics, the World Series, the Masters, the U.S. Open golf championship. I blogged from the Great Wall of China.

But the best sight I ever witnessed came at last year's Final Four in Indianapolis. It was at the end of Butler's open practice session Friday when every person in Lucas Oil Stadium rose to their feet and began clapping, every soul wearing the colors of Butler or Duke or Michigan State or West Virginia cheered loudly the small school from seven miles up the road that had allowed teams everywhere to dream the greatest of dreams, that had written a story of spirit and togetherness and all that is possible for those who are good enough and believe.

Butler players and coaches stood there last year, soaked it in, returned the applause, appreciated the moment. Everyone did.

And then, imagine this, the Bulldogs wrote the same story again this year.

"When you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see the (big picture) because you're trying to do your job and figure out a way," Stevens said. "I'm sure in a month or two I'll have a better feel for it. But I think our kids and our staff and our school recognizes the magnitude of the accomplishments."

Forget last impressions.

Celebrate the journey of Butler.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.