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Wednesday, March 17, 2010 10:21:38 AM
It’s the Bricks That Make Butler Basketball Special
By JOHN BRANCH
March 16, 2010
In 1947, 15,000 fans watched Lawrence Central beat Manual in Hinkle Fieldhouse.
Hinkle Fieldhouse opened in 1928.
The final game of the 1986 film "Hoosiers," starring Gene Hackman, center, was shot at Hinkle.
INDIANAPOLIS — Hinkle Fieldhouse looks like a red-brick airplane hangar, rising above the neighboring houses at one corner of the Butler University campus. And when a basketball game is played there, the cheers spill through its cracks and its leaky roof and its high windows.
There is no video board. There are no luxury suites. The locker rooms are tight and the narrow concourse congested. Butler’s athletic department offices are squeezed here and there in the recesses under the bleachers.
It is all decidedly, wonderfully old school, even for an old school, founded in 1855. One of the best men’s college basketball programs in the country lives here, as no-frilled as the famous barn in which it plays.
There is something different about Butler. It stands out amid a college basketball landscape where bigger and newer and brasher are confused with success. Butler commands attention simply because it wins, quietly.
Without even the desire for a new arena, without nationally renowned recruits or well-recognized coaches, without a large fan base or much attention from even the local news media, Butler has become a sustained midmajor power, a Gonzaga of the Midwest. In a state that cherishes small-town basketball, Butler feels more Indiana than Indiana — or Purdue, or Notre Dame, or any other college that garners more attention, even for basketball programs that may not be as good.
Butler (28-4), riding a 20-game winning streak, has reached the N.C.A.A. tournament for the fourth season in a row. This time, it earned a No. 5 seed in the West Region. It will play No. 12 Texas-El Paso (26-6) on Thursday in San Jose, Calif.
Butler has reached the Round of 16 twice, in 2003 and 2007, and makes no secret of its aspirations for a national championship this year — when the Final Four will be played in Indianapolis, at Lucas Oil Stadium — or beyond.
“Why would you shoot for anything less than that?” Athletic Director Barry Collier said.
There seem to be plenty of reasons, but they are not wielded as excuses. Butler, a liberal-arts college with about 4,000 students, is tucked into a residential neighborhood five miles north of downtown Indianapolis. It plays in the Horizon League, typically a one-bid conference when it comes to the N.C.A.A. tournament. When Butler won the conference tournament last week at 10,000-seat Hinkle Fieldhouse, attendance was only 6,065. (Students were on spring break.) Butler has not had a player go on to the N.B.A. in decades, although that may change soon. And the basketball program has built a reputation as a jumping-off spot for young, rising coaches, the type of upheaval that persistently threatens a program’s upward momentum.
Even current players could not have expected a few years ago that Butler would establish itself as a perennial power.
“I’d be crazy to tell you that, and you’d think I was crazy for telling you,” the 6-foot-8 junior forward Matt Howard said.
And, of course, Butler hardly dazzles recruits with its home arena, and has lost some because of it. But those are probably not the kind of players Butler wants, anyway.
“If you’re thinking about that, you’re probably thinking about yourself a lot,” Howard said.
Hinkle Fieldhouse (named Butler Fieldhouse until 1966, when it was rechristened to honor the longtime Butler coach Paul D. Hinkle, who was known as Tony) has been Butler’s arena since 1928. But its most famous game was not a Butler game at all.
It came in 1954, when tiny Milan High School beat Muncie Central in the final of the Indiana high school state tournament. The upset still defines this state’s sports history like nothing else. It served as inspiration for the film “Hoosiers,” where the climactic final game (recast as a 1952 story about fictitious Hickory High) was filmed at Hinkle.
But the high school finals have not been played there for about 40 years, having moved on to newer arenas. Indiana boys and girls no longer dream of someday playing at Hinkle Fieldhouse. No players on this Butler team were even born when “Hoosiers” was released, in 1986.
So maybe it is time to consider doing what so many other colleges have done in the endless pursuit of victories and prestige: build a new arena filled with video boards and sprawling locker rooms and luxury suites and training rooms and practice courts and players’ lounges, and surround it with a sponsored brick pathway and plop a bronze statue of the mascot out front.
“You can get out right now,” said Collier, the athletic director credited with building the foundation of a program that he coached from 1989 to 2000.
He smiled. Butler will not consider a new arena.
“There’s too much good here,” he said.
Down the concourse, Coach Brad Stevens sat inside a windowless office, about the size of a bedroom. He played basketball at DePauw and slid immediately into a marketing job with Eli Lilly and Company. About a year into a promising career, Stevens decided to follow his heart toward coaching. He started as a volunteer in Butler’s basketball offices and was the coordinator of basketball operations under Thad Matta, now the Ohio State coach. In 2001, he became an assistant the next season under Todd Lickliter, who left in 2007 to take the coaching job at Iowa. (He was fired Monday.)
Butler has maintained consistency through its homegrown coaching tree. Three of its past four head coaches — Collier, Matta and Lickliter — played for the Bulldogs. Its past three — Matta, Lickliter and Stevens — were Butler assistants when they were promoted. Together, they have led Butler to the N.C.A.A. tournament nine times since 1997.
Stevens was only 30 when he got the job. Three years later, and still sometimes confused for a player, Stevens has won 84 games. No Division I coach has won more in his first three seasons. Butler officials worry that big-school suitors are lining up. Stevens shrugged.
“Where else, the last three years, can you win 28 games a year, go to three N.C.A.A. tournaments and coach four academic all-Americans?” Stevens said.
On the wall of his office are framed black-and-white photographs of his two children posing at Hinkle Fieldhouse. He would be “really upset,” he said, if Butler ever replaced the old building.
“It’s not for everybody,” Stevens said. “But it is for somebody that appreciates tradition, somebody that appreciates history. And oftentimes, those are people that appreciate team.”
Ten of the 15 players on Butler’s roster are from Indiana, most from small towns like Connersville, Noblesville and New Castle. They grew up knowing more about the story of “Hoosiers” than about Butler. To them, Hinkle Fieldhouse was where Bobby Plump hit the last-second shot to win the 1954 title game for Milan High School — not where Bobby Plump later starred for Butler.
“The rims are 10 feet here, too,” said Howard, a knowing reference to a scene in “Hoosiers” where the coach, played by Gene Hackman, has the rims measured to demonstrate that players should not be awed by the big arena.
The senior guard Willie Veasley, from Illinois, estimated that he had seen “Hoosiers” 200 times, mostly since his arrival in Indiana. It is shown during basketball camps at Butler.
But Butler’s continued success may keep it from playing in a sort of basketball time capsule forever. The 6-8 sophomore Gordon Hayward, a do-everything forward, is being projected as a possible first-round N.B.A. draft pick this year, should he decide to leave school.
He grew up in Brownsburg, on the northwestern fringe of Indianapolis.
“In high school, my dad asked me about Butler,” said Hayward, who was not highly recruited until a late growth spurt. “There was no way. I never came to Butler, and I was only 20 minutes away.”
A college once famous for its hulking red-brick arena is finally gaining notice more for the basketball team that plays inside it.
“Now,” Hayward said, “a lot of people know Butler.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/sports/ncaabasketball/17butler.html?ref=ncaabasketball&pagewanted=print
By JOHN BRANCH
March 16, 2010
In 1947, 15,000 fans watched Lawrence Central beat Manual in Hinkle Fieldhouse.
Hinkle Fieldhouse opened in 1928.
The final game of the 1986 film "Hoosiers," starring Gene Hackman, center, was shot at Hinkle.
INDIANAPOLIS — Hinkle Fieldhouse looks like a red-brick airplane hangar, rising above the neighboring houses at one corner of the Butler University campus. And when a basketball game is played there, the cheers spill through its cracks and its leaky roof and its high windows.
There is no video board. There are no luxury suites. The locker rooms are tight and the narrow concourse congested. Butler’s athletic department offices are squeezed here and there in the recesses under the bleachers.
It is all decidedly, wonderfully old school, even for an old school, founded in 1855. One of the best men’s college basketball programs in the country lives here, as no-frilled as the famous barn in which it plays.
There is something different about Butler. It stands out amid a college basketball landscape where bigger and newer and brasher are confused with success. Butler commands attention simply because it wins, quietly.
Without even the desire for a new arena, without nationally renowned recruits or well-recognized coaches, without a large fan base or much attention from even the local news media, Butler has become a sustained midmajor power, a Gonzaga of the Midwest. In a state that cherishes small-town basketball, Butler feels more Indiana than Indiana — or Purdue, or Notre Dame, or any other college that garners more attention, even for basketball programs that may not be as good.
Butler (28-4), riding a 20-game winning streak, has reached the N.C.A.A. tournament for the fourth season in a row. This time, it earned a No. 5 seed in the West Region. It will play No. 12 Texas-El Paso (26-6) on Thursday in San Jose, Calif.
Butler has reached the Round of 16 twice, in 2003 and 2007, and makes no secret of its aspirations for a national championship this year — when the Final Four will be played in Indianapolis, at Lucas Oil Stadium — or beyond.
“Why would you shoot for anything less than that?” Athletic Director Barry Collier said.
There seem to be plenty of reasons, but they are not wielded as excuses. Butler, a liberal-arts college with about 4,000 students, is tucked into a residential neighborhood five miles north of downtown Indianapolis. It plays in the Horizon League, typically a one-bid conference when it comes to the N.C.A.A. tournament. When Butler won the conference tournament last week at 10,000-seat Hinkle Fieldhouse, attendance was only 6,065. (Students were on spring break.) Butler has not had a player go on to the N.B.A. in decades, although that may change soon. And the basketball program has built a reputation as a jumping-off spot for young, rising coaches, the type of upheaval that persistently threatens a program’s upward momentum.
Even current players could not have expected a few years ago that Butler would establish itself as a perennial power.
“I’d be crazy to tell you that, and you’d think I was crazy for telling you,” the 6-foot-8 junior forward Matt Howard said.
And, of course, Butler hardly dazzles recruits with its home arena, and has lost some because of it. But those are probably not the kind of players Butler wants, anyway.
“If you’re thinking about that, you’re probably thinking about yourself a lot,” Howard said.
Hinkle Fieldhouse (named Butler Fieldhouse until 1966, when it was rechristened to honor the longtime Butler coach Paul D. Hinkle, who was known as Tony) has been Butler’s arena since 1928. But its most famous game was not a Butler game at all.
It came in 1954, when tiny Milan High School beat Muncie Central in the final of the Indiana high school state tournament. The upset still defines this state’s sports history like nothing else. It served as inspiration for the film “Hoosiers,” where the climactic final game (recast as a 1952 story about fictitious Hickory High) was filmed at Hinkle.
But the high school finals have not been played there for about 40 years, having moved on to newer arenas. Indiana boys and girls no longer dream of someday playing at Hinkle Fieldhouse. No players on this Butler team were even born when “Hoosiers” was released, in 1986.
So maybe it is time to consider doing what so many other colleges have done in the endless pursuit of victories and prestige: build a new arena filled with video boards and sprawling locker rooms and luxury suites and training rooms and practice courts and players’ lounges, and surround it with a sponsored brick pathway and plop a bronze statue of the mascot out front.
“You can get out right now,” said Collier, the athletic director credited with building the foundation of a program that he coached from 1989 to 2000.
He smiled. Butler will not consider a new arena.
“There’s too much good here,” he said.
Down the concourse, Coach Brad Stevens sat inside a windowless office, about the size of a bedroom. He played basketball at DePauw and slid immediately into a marketing job with Eli Lilly and Company. About a year into a promising career, Stevens decided to follow his heart toward coaching. He started as a volunteer in Butler’s basketball offices and was the coordinator of basketball operations under Thad Matta, now the Ohio State coach. In 2001, he became an assistant the next season under Todd Lickliter, who left in 2007 to take the coaching job at Iowa. (He was fired Monday.)
Butler has maintained consistency through its homegrown coaching tree. Three of its past four head coaches — Collier, Matta and Lickliter — played for the Bulldogs. Its past three — Matta, Lickliter and Stevens — were Butler assistants when they were promoted. Together, they have led Butler to the N.C.A.A. tournament nine times since 1997.
Stevens was only 30 when he got the job. Three years later, and still sometimes confused for a player, Stevens has won 84 games. No Division I coach has won more in his first three seasons. Butler officials worry that big-school suitors are lining up. Stevens shrugged.
“Where else, the last three years, can you win 28 games a year, go to three N.C.A.A. tournaments and coach four academic all-Americans?” Stevens said.
On the wall of his office are framed black-and-white photographs of his two children posing at Hinkle Fieldhouse. He would be “really upset,” he said, if Butler ever replaced the old building.
“It’s not for everybody,” Stevens said. “But it is for somebody that appreciates tradition, somebody that appreciates history. And oftentimes, those are people that appreciate team.”
Ten of the 15 players on Butler’s roster are from Indiana, most from small towns like Connersville, Noblesville and New Castle. They grew up knowing more about the story of “Hoosiers” than about Butler. To them, Hinkle Fieldhouse was where Bobby Plump hit the last-second shot to win the 1954 title game for Milan High School — not where Bobby Plump later starred for Butler.
“The rims are 10 feet here, too,” said Howard, a knowing reference to a scene in “Hoosiers” where the coach, played by Gene Hackman, has the rims measured to demonstrate that players should not be awed by the big arena.
The senior guard Willie Veasley, from Illinois, estimated that he had seen “Hoosiers” 200 times, mostly since his arrival in Indiana. It is shown during basketball camps at Butler.
But Butler’s continued success may keep it from playing in a sort of basketball time capsule forever. The 6-8 sophomore Gordon Hayward, a do-everything forward, is being projected as a possible first-round N.B.A. draft pick this year, should he decide to leave school.
He grew up in Brownsburg, on the northwestern fringe of Indianapolis.
“In high school, my dad asked me about Butler,” said Hayward, who was not highly recruited until a late growth spurt. “There was no way. I never came to Butler, and I was only 20 minutes away.”
A college once famous for its hulking red-brick arena is finally gaining notice more for the basketball team that plays inside it.
“Now,” Hayward said, “a lot of people know Butler.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/sports/ncaabasketball/17butler.html?ref=ncaabasketball&pagewanted=print
"Illegitimi non carborundum."
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