RealClearSports: Butler's Big Dance Big Disappointment

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

HOUSTON -- The ultimate game of the Final Four was a final flop, the Big Dance a big disappointment. You can debate whether the best team won the national college basketball championship, but there's no little doubt the poorest shooting team lost it Monday night.

An event the NCAA likes to promote as its premier sporting attraction deserved to get the hook, and that didn't mean the hook shots, because almost none of those fell either.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: Another Chance for a Butler Moment

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

HOUSTON -- Remember that Canon advertising slogan a while back, the one trying to persuade us perception is reality? Not in college basketball, it isn't. Reality is what you put on the floor. And on the scoreboard.

Reality is Butler University.

Provide explanations. Make excuses. Butler, we believe, must be doing it with smoke and mirrors, doing it because all the schools it has faced -- all the schools it has defeated -- have been unable to do it.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: Games Are Best Even If Teams Aren't

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

HOUSTON — An interesting theory put forth by the man from the Midwest: The team that wins the NCAA tournament won't be the best in college basketball. Well, then, who will be, all those schools eliminated along the way?

The refrain repeated so often has basketball ahead of college football, because in basketball a champion is determined the proper way, in competition.

Oh, we keep hearing, why can't football do the same thing, have a playoff?

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: Butler Does Its Ugly Best

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

INDIANAPOLIS -- The sense is something mystical is happening, something beyond all the rebounds, turnovers and missed shots -- and oh, were there missed shots.

The thought is everything is going so perfectly for Butler, the sporting gods have taken control of the college basketball season.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010