Can The Butler Do It?

Looking at this years Florida Gators team, they look very similar to the 2002 Duke team and if that's the case, the Gators better bring their 'A' game on Friday night. In 2002, Duke appeared to have a cake walk to the Final 4. In fact, the experts believed the only real team that could give them a run for their money was USC, who had played Duke very tough in the Elite 8 the year before. Fortunately, at least at the moment, USC was picked off by that pesky Colonial again in the form of UNC Wilmington. Once USC went down, the Iron Dukes began to search for Final 4 tickets. In the 2nd Round, the Blue Devils went up against an up and coming coach Mike Brey, who had been an assistant at Duke before he got canned after the 1995 disaster, and his Notre Dame Fighting Irish took the Devils to the brink before Daniel Ewing, the freshman, bailed the Devils out late.

Duke would then face Indiana in the Sweet 16 coached by Mike Davis, hardly the intimidating coaching figure that Bob Knight was. Before the game, Davis heard some of the Duke press people asking what time the game was on Saturday, meaning that Duke would dismantle Indiana and play in the Elite 8 on Saturday. He would use that as motivation for his team. Early on, that clearly didn't work. Duke built a substantial lead and led by 17 points with 16 minutes to go. However, Dahntay Jones fouled out with 8 minutes left and all of a sudden the tide swung rapidly and the Devils couldn't get the momentum back. Sure, they had a chance to tie and then win the game in the final seconds in the sequence that I refer to as the worst 10 seconds in Blue Devil history but they should have never been in such a situation to begin with. After that game, Duke would lose 3 Juniors to the NBA Draft: Williams, Boozer, and Dunleavy. What seemed like a cake walk to the Final 4 and National Championship fell apart in the blink of an eye.

Looking at Florida, you see some similarities. They too were a #1 seed and were in, what experts thought, the easiest bracket of the four. The only real competition for the Gators was a streaking Maryland team who had the athleticism and experience to run with Florida. However, in the 2nd Round, Butler picked Maryland off and everyone punched Florida's ticket to the Final 4. In the 2nd Round game, Florida ran into an up and coming coach as well, Matt Painter, who had his Purdue team in position to win the game with 5 minutes left until Noah and Horford took over. Florida, like Duke had done against Notre Dame 5 years earlier, had escaped the possibility of an early exit.

Now, I'm not sure if Butler has the fire power to do what Indiana did to Duke but it's certainly possible and Florida shouldn't take the game lightly. Butler doesn't have a lottery pick on their roster like Indiana had in Jared Jeffries but they are very well coached, they play defense, and they can flat out shoot the ball.

Beware of the Bulldogs...