Butler shakes off bad shooting, injuries, finds new way to win and get to NCAA title game

Butler way leads to NCAA championship

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s not easy keeping up with Butler, which keeps finding new ways to win games.

Take away the 3-pointers and the Bulldogs drive to the basket. Shut down the offense and they lock down on defense. Challenge them on the glass and they’ll go toe-to-toe against the nation’s best.

An uncanny ability to adapt is the reason Butler will play for a national title Monday night.

The Bulldogs overcame ice-cold shooting and injuries to two starters, then relied on only two players to carry the scoring load to beat Michigan State 52-50 Saturday night.

“I thought it was fitting that we had to get a defensive stop on that last possession of the game because that’s how we’ve won all season,” forward Gordon Hayward said. “We had to win the Butler way.”

But the way Butler won this time certainly deviated from the typical script.

They shot just 30.6 percent from the field after making 42.1 percent this season. Instead of relying on 3-pointers, as they have all year, the Bulldogs (33-4) made just 5 of 21 in the game and were shut out from beyond the arc in the second half.

They finished the game without Matt Howard, the 2008-09 Horizon League player of the year, and guard Shelvin Mack, one of the catalysts in this incredible run. Howard left twice after a violent collision with two other players, while Mack left twice because of muscle spasms in his thighs.

Coach Brad Stevens wasn’t sure whether either would play against Duke or West Virginia in the title game.

For Butler, though, this is the norm.

The team resembles an amoeba, constantly making adjustments and reshaping its image, as it did again Saturday.

This time, the Bulldogs went mano-a-mano inside — something even the bigger, stronger Big Ten foes couldn’t do to Michigan State — and they did it despite getting just 15 minutes out of Howard, their best post player.

“It was one of the more physical game we’ve been involved in, and playing in the Big Ten, that’s saying something,” Spartans coach Tom Izzo said after losing his first NCAA tourney game ever in Indy. “They play as hard as anybody we’ve played. They are physical.”

The Bulldogs battled one of the nation’s top rebounding teams to a virtual draw, 36-32, and actually took away Michigan State’s customary advantage on the offensive glass. Butler won that contest 11-8.

The result was as shocking as it was to see the hometown team reach the championship game after making just one basket in the final 12:18.

“I don’t know if words can explain what everybody is feeling right now, to be in the national championship game when nobody gave us a chance at all,” Butler guard Willie Veasley said. “That’s what we do. We get stops when we need them. We’ve done that all year. When we need them, we get them, five guys buckle down together and that’s what we did at the end of the game.”

Players weren’t the only ones making adjustments.

Coach Brad Stevens captivated outsiders all week with his cool demeanor, which changed in front of 70,000 fans inside the dome.

Just 6½ minutes into the game, an official turned to Stevens and twice signaled for him to stop complaining. Fourteen seconds later, when Howard was called for his second foul, Stevens stomped his foot on the floor and threw his hands into the air. And when Mack drove in for a layup and drew a foul, Stevens fell to one knee as the ball dropped through the net.

But the 33-year-old baby-faced coach reverted to form in the second half, when Butler struggled offensively, and the Bulldogs responded the way they usually do — extending the nation’s longest winning streak to 25 to move within one game of an improbable championship.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way and somehow we keep finding it,” guard Zach Hahn said.