INDIANAPOLIS — It’s too soon to look ahead, of course. Too painful, too, for all but Duke Nation. The Blue Devils’ 61-59 win over Butler in Monday night’s NCAA championship game is going to stick with us for a while. Maybe a long while.
We’re going to see Bulldogs forward Gordon Hayward’s half-court heave rimming out by the narrowest of margins at the buzzer in our nightmares for months to come — “Hoosiers” remaining fiction rather than fact for at least one more season.
This isn’t to say that Duke didn’t deserve victory. It did. It took a good draw and turned it into a great run by a previously unspectacular squad. That’s why Mike Krzyzewski remains the best coach in the college game, his fourth title coming 19 years after his first.
Even the finish that was will be remembered for years to come.
Or as Coach K said, “It will become a historic game, a benchmark game. I’ve been in eight national championship games, and this one was the toughest and the best one, a classic.”
But oh, what might have been if Hayward’s heave had hit two inches lower on the backboard. For starters, college basketball would have a new best shot ever, dropping Duke’s Christian Laettner to No. 2 on that list.
Of greater importance, a sport long maligned for one-and-dones, graduation rates, shady recruiting and uneven officiating finally would have had its one shining moment — a game to end all games, a singular night of brilliance to make us all recall why we first fell in love with an orange ball falling through a white net.
Instead, we’re left with Almost. As in almost perfect, a marvelous game two inches from immortality.
Still, Monday having just turned to Tuesday, the 2009-10 college basketball season thereby officially giving way to 2010-11, Krzyzewski briefly looked ahead.
“Somebody’s going to pick the Top 10 for next year tomorrow, just because that’s the way the sport is,” Coach K said inside Lucas Oil Stadium. “And where are you going to put Butler? Yeah, right up there. No. 1 or 2.”
Kansas can speak painfully today of being the preseason No. 1. Kentucky can echo the pressure of attempting to satisfy outsized expectations. There’s never anywhere to go but down, and that’s where KU and UK descended during March Madness.
In their wake arrived the best stories and games the NCAA tourney has seen in years, if not decades. Murray State over Vanderbilt. Northern Iowa over Kansas. Baylor. West Virginia. Kansas State. (And the Kansas State-Xavier double-overtime thriller in the West regional semifinal.) Tennessee, which made it onto CBS’s “One Shining Moment” at least four times.
But most of all, best of all, there was Butler.
It’s highly debatable whether or not the Bulldogs can reach a second straight Final Four. Much as the selection committee handed the Blue Devils the easiest draw at tourney’s dawn, Butler lived the most charmed life once the event began.
Murray State easily could have beaten the Bulldogs in the round of 32. They faced Syracuse in the Sweet 16 without the Orange’s bruising post player Arinze Onuaku, who would have been a matchup monster for Butler’s shorter, less physical front line. Then came Kansas State in the West final. Having gone two overtimes with Xavier in the thin Utah air less than 42 hours earlier, the Wildcats were gassed.
Even Michigan State in the Final Four was a frail team, playing with a center (Delvon Roe) who shouldn’t have played and without a point guard (Kalin Lucas) who was an All-America candidate when the season began.
It is wonderful for Butler coach Brad Stevens to say, “I’ll start working for next season by the time I get on the bus,” but as Kansas and Kentucky can tell you, preparation sometimes needs a little luck come tourney time.
That said, if the Bulldogs’ Hayward doesn’t turn pro, Butler should again be a Top 10 team, possibly top five. If Blue Devils juniors Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler don’t turn pro, Duke should be in the mix to defend its crown.
As for the rest of the top five, another strong recruiting class should have Florida back among the nation’s elite, North Carolina’s absence from the nation’s elite should be a quick one — especially if center Ben Davis doesn’t turn pro and incoming freshman Harrison Barnes is as good as advertised — and Tennessee also could get there if rising junior Scotty Hopson finally lives up to his hype.
Five others to watch: Memphis, Minnesota (if coach Tubby Smith stays), Ohio State, Arizona and Louisville.
Wild card: Kentucky. The Wildcats could be either awful or awesome, depending on who goes in or comes out of John Calipari’s revolving door.
Final Four: North Carolina, Memphis, Florida and Tennessee, with the reloaded and revitalized Tar Heels winning it all.
Until then, I’ll wrap up this season with words from Butler’s Stevens, who replied when asked how long it might take to recover from Monday night, “It’s not going to be tomorrow, that’s for sure.”
Not for him and not for a lot of the rest of us who’ll feel a pit in our stomach every time we see Hayward’s heave rim out.