You have to appreciate just how impressive Butler's last two touraments are

Butler's trip to the Final Four last season was unforeseen.

But it wasn't unfathomable.

They were a top ten team in the preseason. They were a top five team defensively. They had a lottery pick on the wing, a couple of other scorers on the roster, and a number of role players that understood their jobs. They were a team in every sense of the word, they got hot at the right time, and they took advantage of some good matchups by making it all the way to the national title game.

This season?


The Bulldogs saw that lottery pick suit up for the Utah Jazz. They lost their best defender to graduation. They stumbled through much of the regular season before winning nine straight, including two games in the Horizon League Tournament, just to get to the dance.

That is what makes this year's run to the Final Four so impressive.

The Bulldogs aren't a secret anymore. They were the biggest story is all of college basketball last year. They didn't sneak up on anyone this season. And they still managed to beat four very good basketball teams en route to a second straight Final Four appearance. As an eight seed. That is the lowest seed to reach the Final Four since George Mason made it as an 11 in 2006.

What Brad Stevens has done the past two seasons with this Butler team is one of the most incredible and most impressive accomplishments in the history of college basketball.

And there is no exaggeration in that statement.

Making a Final Four is difficult. You have to win four straight games against good basketball teams. There is a lot of skill involved, and nearly as much luck. Its all about getting the right matchups and exploiting the mismatches. Its about winning close games and performing in the clutch.

(Here's an incredible stat -- Butler is 9-1 in the NCAA Tournament the past two seasons. Of those nine wins, only one came by more than double digits. That was last year's first round game against UTEP.)

There are great coaches that have never made a Final Four -- Jamie Dixon and Mark Few immediately come to mind. Programs like Duke and Kentucky and UCLA consider it an accomplishment to make back-to-back Final Fours. And those are the programs with the massive recruiting budgets and the McDonald's all-americans and the future NBA Draft picks.

This is Butler. This is a team whose home gym, Hinkle Fieldhouse, has ten times the tradition that the program does. This is a team who lucked into Gordon Hayward and his late growth spurt and pulled Shelvin Mack out of Lexington because he was a late-bloomer in high school.

This two year run by the Bulldogs?

This is why college basketball is so great.

Because the team that has all the odds stacked against them -- ahem, Boise State -- doesn't need to have a perfect regular season to play for the national title.

Enjoy it, folks.