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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 3, 2011

HOUSTON, TEXAS

THE MODERATOR: We can get started with Butler. Questions, please.

Q. Shelvin, last summer with the select team, how much time did you spend with Kemba? Were you friendly, hang out? Could you have imagined he would have this kind of year he's had?
SHELVIN MACK: Last summer I spent a lot of time with him, not only with the USA thing, but also a few camps. We had a lot of fun together on and off the court. We texted each other throughout the season.
I like to see the success he's having. I know he worked hard. He's just continuing to get better these days. I think that's what attributes to his success this year.

Q. Shelvin, can you talk a little bit about your ability to rise to the occasion, looking at your points average compared to the regular season? Coach, if you could talk about that as well.
SHELVIN MACK: I would say I'm just staying positive. The biggest thing is my teammates has confidence in me. If I miss 10 straight shots or if I make 10 straight shots, they just give me the ball and tell me to make a play.
I think that's a very important thing to have confidence. Also the coaching staff has confidence in me. They put me in spots to have success. I think it's been working out.
COACH STEVENS: I've never seen a guard have workouts like he had in the pre-season. So you knew it was going to be another step forward. That being said, there's going to be some peaks and valleys throughout the year. The most important thing is to believe - not only for him to believe, but for everybody to continue to believe and know that certainly he's a guy that's capable of making big plays, but he's also a guy that's capable of making plays for others.
You saw a great play last night where he not only had a run on his own, but he also found Shawn on a skip late in the game. That's the kind of thing he's been doing all year. Everybody is going to pay attention to his shooting, percentages. I always feel like the next one's going in when he shoots it.

Q. Brad, when you recruited Shelvin, in your heart of hearts did you think his upside was as high as it's become?
COACH STEVENS: You know he's a really good player. You know he's got a work ethic that is unmatched by most. You add those two things together and you have a high upside.
Certainly the last thing that you're ever going to get from a coach is that a guy's met their expectations. I think you always think guys can achieve even more and more and more. Shelvin's continued to do that all the way throughout his career.

Q. Brad, without giving away trade secrets here, how critical is it that you contain Jeremy Lamb?
COACH STEVENS: I think Lamb, Napier, their other guards, really put people in a tough position. I think their three guards, certainly Walker has had a Player-of-the-Year type year, their three guards, along with the activity of the bigs, are why they're one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country, because those three guards break you down, get inside of you, cause you to rotate, then you're in bad rebounding position.

Q. I'm wondering over the past year or so, have you gotten texts or phone calls from guys at other 'mid-majors' asking, How do you do it?
MATT HOWARD: No. I guess I haven't. I don't know if I'm an exception there, but I haven't. There are some guys that I talk to. But it's not about that. The questions aren't asked in that way about what we're doing.
SHAWN VANZANT: I'm going to go along with Matt. I haven't gotten any text messages from other than friends and family encouraging us to win.

Q. What do you recall in terms of your emotions and what you saw when Gordon's shot went up and hit the front of the rim, fell off?
MATT HOWARD: You know, I didn't see the shot initially 'cause I was turned around. When you turn around, I guess I wouldn't necessarily say I thought he was going to be that close. Maybe that's what made it a little more hard to deal with, is that it was so close.
Just remember that difference of high and low right there where you think it's going in, then it doesn't. You realize what just happened. That's basically what I remember from that moment.
COACH STEVENS: You know, it's such a low-percentage shot made better because he's such a good player. You know what the result is probably going to be. I said this last night, there were absolutely no regrets last year. I had no regrets. After watching the film again of that Duke game, even less.
Our guys played as well as they could have. They represented themselves in an unbelievable manner throughout that whole game. That might be the reason why we had parades, too, even though we lost. It was remarkable the way people treated us even though we lost.

Q. Brad, can you reflect on Shelvin's recruitment a little bit, how he got there, his evolution as a player. In doing that, talk about his cramping, how he's had to overcome that.
COACH STEVENS: Well, Shelvin's recruitment was one where we saw him play a couple times in the summer prior to his senior year. He was playing with a really, really good summer league team or summer team. We continued recruiting him on into the fall. He committed to us in January during your senior year.
Brandon Miller was on our staff at the time, who is now at Ohio State, was the lead recruiter from an assistant coaching standpoint, is a guy that I think Shelvin and I both like and admire for the way he carries himself, what he's like. We just thought really highly of Shelvin. We thought highly of him not only as a basketball player. But like all these guys, everybody you talk to in the school loved him. Everybody you talked to around the community had nothing but praise for the way he conducted himself.
SHELVIN MACK: With the cramp situation, our training staff done a great job of giving me electrolytes, making sure I'm getting the proper drinks in my body. I think it's taken care of the cramps.

Q. Clearly the core of this team has been together for a couple years. Speak to how much their experience together has helped you these last couple years. Matt, Shelvin, talk about the camaraderie of this group.
COACH STEVENS: For me personally, the core of my first team was as important for me in transitioning into coaching as any group we've ever had just because we had five 23-year-olds, four fifth-year seniors and one fourth-year senior, and they were nothing but great to a young coach.
I think when they left and turned it over to these younger guys, now older guys, they just continued to be great to coach and great to be around.
It's been collective all the way through. We've just had unbelievable people and it's made my job a lot more enjoyable and a lot easier.
MATT HOWARD: Yeah, I think this group really likes to be together. That's really important. We enjoy every game we get to play with each other. I think that does help. It helps build a chemistry. You start to understand how you can put those guys in spots, be successful, and make plays for them.
I think, you know, the more games you play, the better that gets.
SHELVIN MACK: Yeah, it's been very special. I've been with Matt, Shawn and Chase for three years now, Andrew two. We have the experience and confidence in each other. It helps you out a lot on the court.

Q. Coach and Matt, if you could reflect on what you think the legacy that this team has set over a two-year span. Also, do you have any kind of a sense of being in the middle of the fray of how many people across the country find your tournament runs inspiring?
MATT HOWARD: You know, I don't think that's something that we need to worry about right now. Hopefully we're focused on the task at hand. All that takes care of itself. That's essentially the way I'm approaching it. I think the rest of the guys are doing that as well.
You let those things take care of themselves, I think.
COACH STEVENS: I agree with Matt wholeheartedly. Not only that, I would say that that should be the least of their concerns when tomorrow night's game is over. I think the whole phrase 'success is having, excellence is being' applies to what you're doing next. I think these guys will have success after they leave Butler because of the kind of people they are, not because of what they've already achieved.

Q. I wanted to ask about the 'Butler way' as a defining principle. Is it something you actually talk to your players about and explain or does it just become evident in the way you prepare for games and practice? If you could sort of connect the dots on how it might translate to the success your team has had.
COACH STEVENS: Well, I think it's not rocket science. It's a values-based organization driven by a mission and a vision like every other business in the world or every other collective group in the world.
The key in any endeavor is adhering to those standards and trying to live up to those standards, not trying to worry about anything else. It's hard to do and easy to talk about.
I think it begins with selflessness, and certainly accountability is very important, humility is very important. You kind of go through those founding principles.
We always talk about it this way with the team. The only way we address the 'Butler Way' with our team is in this regard: people know they've seen and felt something special, they just can't put their finger on it. That's the only thing we ever talk about with regard to that phrase with our team.

Q. Brad, after the game last night you were in here taking notes. How deep are the notes on Kemba? Does he present a unique challenge? You haven't faced a team where there's been one guy so vital.
COACH STEVENS: He's really good. I mean, I was taking notes on our own stat sheet. I didn't have anything on UConn at that time. I didn't know who we were going to play. What I was doing up here last night was more assessing our team.
But I think he's a guy that makes a lot of plays. He's a guy that puts you in a lot of unique positions. The thing that UConn doesn't get enough credit for, everybody talks about how good those guards are with the ball, I think they're great cutters. I think when they put him off the ball with Napier on the one, he's as difficult if not more difficult.
But we have played teams that have singular stars, but this isn't a team that has just a singular star. This is a team that has a lot of really good players and possibly a couple of pros around a for-sure pro.

Q. You might not want to be labeled a mid-major, but you are being an inspiration for schools in smaller conferences. What advice would you have for them or what can they take from you to get to where you are and where you've been the last couple years?
MATT HOWARD: I'd just say do what you do. We haven't ever changed what we do. You stay within your vision and your system, you get guys that buy into it, you can be successful.
I've been here four years, and nothing's really changed. We've done things the same way. I think that's really important, whether you don't make it to the tournament, you lose in the first round, or you're fortunate enough to make it to this game. It's all about staying solid and staying within what you do.
SHELVIN MACK: Going along with what Matt said. Trust what you're doing, do what you trust. If you can improve, have people buy into your system, great things will happen because you all have faith in each other and you'll have a lot of success.
COACH STEVENS: You know, I'm not really in the business of giving advice to people we're going to try to beat (laughter). We have a hard enough time beating those teams as it is.
I think the most important thing is adhering to the standards, whatever you deem to be the standards and values of your program, is clearly the most important thing.
The second thing is you have to have people in your program all on one page that believe. It's a lot easier said than done. Believing, anybody can stand up here and say they believe, but truly believing you can do it and you can do it together is a unique thing.

Q. Have you ever seen Brad really, really angry? Has he ever used a swear word? Any good anecdotes or stories about him that dispel the even-keeled guy that he is?
MATT HOWARD: You know, you don't normally see that. I think it's good for him to do that because when he does or when you do see that, it really gets your attention, makes you realize there's something going on, you need to fix something immediately.
It's very, very rare. But, like I said, it's definitely effective when it does happen.
SHELVIN MACK: Yeah, I seen it a few times in practice. Guys messing up a few assignments. But see a lot of smack talking when we have shooting contests between me and him. He gives it to me a lot. It's a lot of fun. He has a competitive side inside of him that a lot of people don't get to see.
SHAWN VANZANT: Oh, man. I think I caught a couple of his wrath for messing up in practice or something. I definitely like it. It's similar to my high school coach. He's definitely a lot more laid back than my high school coach. When I mess up in practice a couple times, he lets me know about it, it gets me going, so I like it.

Q. There's been a theory for a while, real or otherwise, that you can do a lot of nice things from a place like Butler, from a league like the Horizon, but that you can't win it all. Do you take any satisfaction if you're able to do this, in taking that theory off the table completely? Also, did you ever subscribe to that theory?
COACH STEVENS: Well, I think that you certainly see obstacles in front of you, there's no question about it. But those obstacles are, in my eyes, driven by how good the other teams are, not anything else to do with where you are or the conference you play in.
I think our team's very good. I think the teams we've been playing against are very good. We've been fortunate enough to squeak by and be here. Certainly there are a lot of reasons to say you can't, but it's a lot more fun to say you can, and it's a lot more fun to believe.
I think you have to have certain guys that believe. And it goes back to that. I thought about when we went back to the Sweet 16 in 2007, we had a couple of seniors in Marcus Nellems, Brandon Crone and Brian Ligon. Brandon Crone played a couple years overseas, but Brian Ligon went to dental school and he's a dentist now, and Marcus Nellems went and got his Master's of Art teaching, and he's an elementary school teacher. Those guys gave us a belief that we could do something if we all stayed together and did all our jobs as well as we possibly can.
For whatever reason, we've kept those rose-colored glasses on and tried to continue forward.
MATT HOWARD: Yeah, I think it's hard to argue with coach on that. It is about having a belief. That's throughout the whole team. I don't know if that's selfish or not, but we want to do it for ourselves. We don't look at it at doing it for everyone else or feeling like we need to disable some theory.
It's about this team and believing that we can accomplish the next task at hand.
SHELVIN MACK: We kind of want to do it for ourselves, not for anyone else. We work hard every day, I think me and my teammates deserve it. I think that's the biggest thing.

Q. Chase, since you've been in the starting lineup, the team hasn't lost. How often do you remind the team of that? Coach, can you talk about that decision.
CHASE STIGALL: Somebody said that to me the other day. When it first was said, it really didn't hit me till somebody told me. I really wasn't aware of it at that time.
COACH STEVENS: The decision was Chase was a good player, Chase complements the guys in the starting lineup well. I thought that we also could really utilize Ron and Zach coming off the bench together.
Again, I think that's a two-way street. It's not easy, but it's easier to be the guy that's jumping into the starting lineup than the guy that gets moved out of the starting lineup. Both of them have handled it like champs and both are incredibly supportive of one another.

Q. Brad, since Ronald is half robot now, is he a better defender, the same, or just pain-free?
COACH STEVENS: Well, it's interesting you say that. I think earlier in the year he was getting back to playing again. He has not had a true summer of off-season work for the last two summers. So I think he's really feeling better and he's really playing well.
He's a great defender. I thought he did a great job handling the ball yesterday against Rodriguez, his pressure up the court. Again, just like all these guys, his season's have all kind of mirrored one another in the fact that he's playing his best basketball right now.

Q. Shelvin, tell me what Brad Stevens' smack talk is? What does it sound like?
SHELVIN MACK: We do a lot of the shooting games. He might hit one. You can't shoot. You go shoot a layup. You can't shoot this deep. Little things like that. Nothing major.
That's all I got (smiling).

Q. Andrew and Matt, could you talk about the way you could control the boards so well in this tournament even though you didn't necessarily have bigger size than your opponents? How tough is it going to do the same against Connecticut?
ANDREW SMITH: I don't think it's just us. Our guards do a great job of helping us as well. Everyone always comes into the game thinking the other team's going to out-rebound us just because that's what they've done the whole year. That's one thing we pride ourselves on as well.
We just go hard every play. We get a lot of play from everyone else.
MATT HOWARD: As Drew said, it's definitely a team effort. We've had some pretty big games from our guards, some really big games from guys off our bench that come in and really give us a lift, going to the offensive glass, getting us rebounds on the defensive end as well.
It's a team mindset, something we've really been focused on in this tournament.

Q. Brad, can you talk a little bit more about what defines Ron Nored as a defender, the role that he'll play in trying to defend Walker tomorrow.
COACH STEVENS: Well, he'll defend all those guys at different times. He won't just be on Walker. One of the things that I think we've got are versatile guys on the perimeter that can defend multiple kinds of guys. I don't think you can ever defend a guy as good as Kemba Walker with one guy. I don't think it's a sound way of going about it.
He's an outstanding defender. He really cares about it. Everybody in basketball growing up, and as they got to be good players, creates kind of an identity of the kind of player they are, whether you be a versatile player, you're a shooter, you're a driver, you're a post, whatever. And his identity and his mind is a defender. Those guys are pretty rare because it's not something that everybody's drawn to.
I haven't seen, you know, SportsCenter or some of the people show a good lead step in a while to shut off a driving lane. It may not be as sexy, but he certainly takes pride in it.

Q. Is it inevitable, whether it's you guys on Monday or somebody in the coming years, that a school from the non-BCS conference is going to win, and why is that?
MATT HOWARD: I don't know that you can say it's inevitable 'cause, you know, we know how hard it is to get here and to be able to have this opportunity again. It's not an easy task. You know, you have to win six games, and you're playing six really good teams.
So, you know, I don't think you can say that it's inevitable because, you know, it's obviously not an easy task. But, you know, hopefully we can take care of business tomorrow night. But, you know, if not, maybe someone will do it in the future. I don't know.
SHELVIN MACK: Yeah, we know it's not going to be an easy task. It's hard for a lot of mid-major schools. You could say that. But we all believe in each other. I'm sure other schools believe in each other. Great things can happen. Just because we're labeled as a mid-major school, a lot of that comes from football. We don't have a football team, so that's why we get labeled as a mid-major.

Q. Coach, can you talk about anytime you spent with Coach Calhoun, what you think of his career, what you think of coaching against a guy who is exactly twice your age?
COACH STEVENS: You know, I think certainly a lot of respect for what they've accomplished. I mean, he's been to multiple Final Fours, won a couple championships. Those are really hard things to do. Coached a lot of good players.
One of the things I appreciate about him, I heard him in a clinic a few years ago, I don't know him all that well, other than we shared the same hotel in Washington, D.C. in the first and second rounds of the tournament, which is pretty unique, the Crystal City Gateway Marriott. Looks like it's a pretty good place to stay starting the tournament. Other than saying hi in passing, I think certainly just to have respect for him.
Anyway, I go back to the clinic that I heard him speak. I really appreciated how he stood up for his guys no matter what. You can see that in the way his team plays.

Q. Coach, can you talk a little bit about the relationship you have with Matt, Shawn and Zach, your group of seniors this year. Matt and Shawn, can you talk about the relationship your class has with Zach.
SHAWN VANZANT: I think the relationship over my four years with Matt, Zach and Coach has been very special to be part of this. Over the years we became very close with each other, one another, got to know one another a lot better. I think it shows on the basketball court.
MATT HOWARD: I'd agree with that. I played summer ball with Zach, grew up sort of in a rival situation. Got to know him really well. Then I got to know Shawn when he came here. Both of those guys mean a lot to me, we've been through a lot together. You know, it's been great to have had a four-year career with those guys.
This whole thing has been a lot of fun to do with them.
THE MODERATOR: We'll let the student-athletes go to their break-out rooms and continue with questions for Coach Stevens.
COACH STEVENS: Well, I think those guys answered the question really well. Sometimes when you're in coaching and you're the one that is demanding they be on time, demanding they trail a down screen, demanding they hedge a ball screen, on 'em all the time for six months out of the year, you hope at the end of the day they know how much I respect them. I think the world of all of 'em.
At add Grant Leiendecker and Alex Anglin to that list because those guys are the ones preparing our team everyday on our scout team. Both of them have given everything they have with very little attention from anyone else. All those guys have been terrific.
I think it's a great story because Matt clearly has been one of the best players in college basketball, whether anybody has labeled him that or not, for the last four years. Everybody else has grown and grown and grown and playing great roles in what we're doing now.

Q. Brad, you talked earlier about the belief in the way the system, whatever you want to call it. How do you as a coach inspire that belief and recruiting, being the inexact science that it is, how do you recruit to it?
COACH STEVENS: I think it is an inexact science. You said that perfectly.
Here is what I do. When we have a recruit on campus, first thing I share is our core values, and then I share what I want from a prospect, whether it be a highly competitive student, ambitious person, a person who represents his high school well, his community well. They know that before we get into what Butler has to offer.
Some people hear it, some people don't. But it's kind of an opportunity for me to say, Here's what's important to us. We've had guys that have given of themselves to the team and still reaped incredible individual benefits with regard to exposure and opportunities to play beyond because of their team's success.

Q. Can you share with us in the past 12 months how many calls, texts, emails, have you gotten from other 'mid-major' coaches, visits, guys coming in to see how you do it?
COACH STEVENS: You know, I think we all talk enough. And coaches had a pretty good idea about Butler a while back, so I don't think it's any more than usual. There's been a couple.
But mostly, you know, you have your group of friends that you see all the time in the summer, that you spend all the time with while you're watching games. Those are the people you talk basketball with. You occasionally get a call from people at any level, whether it be high school or the NBA or whatever the case may be because as coaches we're always all trying to grow and to learn.
Nobody from the mid-majors has really reached out and said, This is exactly what we're looking to do and how do you do it? I think one of the reasons why is it has been pretty well-documented by everybody.
I felt like I didn't know what we were going to talk about this year because we talked about everything last year in great depth over and over. It's pretty remarkable when you think about it.

Q. On Monday in your teleconference you mentioned that you don't want what's happened the last two years to change the program. Are there any sort of doors that you would like to open for you guys because of what you've done the last two years, whether it's bells and whistles, recruiting, other stuff that you can elevate your program with?
COACH STEVENS: Well, I think the most important thing is that we try to advance appropriately without losing who we are. I think there's ways to do that.
One of the ways that stands out is we're renovating Hinkle Fieldhouse. It's a project that could be in upwards of $25 million. If fundraising happens because of this run and we get increased interest in helping out in that regard, I think that will be a really good thing for our program, our school and everybody else.
Those are always ways. There's always ways you can move forward. I think that we're always going to try to do that as long as we have a visionary leadership. Right now with Barry Collier, we do.

Q. After Monday the sport sort of shifts to the focus on the NBA draft and who from the college game might be leaving. Shelvin could face that sort of division, but the dynamic is different because of the NBA labor situation. Can you talk about the dynamics of counseling a kid in this current condition?
COACH STEVENS: One of the things they know is I'm going to take my emotions out of it. They know that right from the get-go. I'm going to tell them exactly where they stand based on the research I've done. We're going to talk to the people that matter: family and anybody that Shelvin thinks matters in that process.
You have to figure out where a person might get drafted, and is it worth going early? If you're a fence guy in the first round, is it worth taking that risk? If you're not a first-rounder, are you willing to give up your last year of college knowing that you may not play? If you're not a lottery pick, like Gordon was going to be, do you risk the things that come with coming back. You have to figure all that out.
In the NBA draft, there are people that are drafted on production-plus potential. And I think there are people that are drafted on production. You also have to figure out which category you fit into and how you'll compare against other people in the draft.

Q. Given the labor situation, how similar or different would that conversation be with Shelvin as opposed to Gordon?
COACH STEVENS: I don't know about the labor situation. I know there's been talk about it. I don't think anybody can stand up here in my shoes and say exactly how long it's going to last. It's certainly a factor.
But then again, does that make this draft weaker? Might. So you might be able to be drafted higher. Does it make it so that nobody wants to go out because they want to sit out their whole senior year and not play basketball until February? Those are decisions and things that we'll talk about at the appropriate time.
But I need to get a firmer grasp on all those things after our season is over. Shelvin and I will sit down next week sometime and we'll cover all that. My advice, I won't have any advice. I will present him with facts. He'll know I'll support him either way.

Q. At one point in the Florida game, you came back and tied it up, they caught you on the sideline. You were clapping, had a big smile on your face. How much of a kick have you gotten out of coaching guys that seem to get into the details as much as you do?
COACH STEVENS: We wouldn't be here if they didn't. We wouldn't be here if they didn't. You know, the clips that we show our guys from teams past are all of those little details, our leap steps, closing out great off of a ball screen where you have to rotate, of getting a great hedge, getting back into play, coming over and taking a charge on a drive on the other side of the floor. I think all of those things go unnoticed and we want to make them important.
I think the other thing we show a lot of is our bench cheering because I think that's really important. All of those things add together to form a team and to make you start to think about the little things that go into winning at a high level that don't always get the attention that they probably deserve in winning.

Q. Is there anything to be said about college basketball when you've got an 8 seed and a 3 seed in this final, but also the fact that the 8 seed is Butler from the Horizon that's kind of talking about unfinished business, and the 3 seed is from the biggest conference in the country that's talking about shocking the world?
COACH STEVENS: No, I think, you know, we're all looking for ways to motivate ourselves. I know both teams won't need any motivation tomorrow night. They're playing for a national championship.
Here's what I do think: I think the sport is so widely covered and the media is so intense, it's hard to be a 1 and 2 seed. I think it's probably lost in the shuffle sometimes. It doesn't surprise me that a 3 and an 8 are left.

Q. Is it inevitable, whether it's you tomorrow night or somebody in the next couple years that a mid-major school is going to win? How much is that based on parity with guys leaving early? You don't tend to lose as many people.
COACH STEVENS: I agree with Matt. I don't think it's inevitable. We've got a chance to compete for a national championship tomorrow, but it's 40 minutes away. It's hard enough to win one basketball game in January, let alone win one in April on Monday night in the national championship game.
I don't think it's inevitable. I think good basketball teams will compete for the national championship. We're fortunate that we've had good basketball teams. Again, what Pat talked about was we had good basketball teams. I've always said this. You can have three or four players that can play everywhere in the country, surround them with the perfect role players, you've got a chance.
I think in the last two years we've at least, you could argue, been in that mix.

Q. There's a certain innocence about your program. When you see what has happened in other places in your sport and in football, including the other team tomorrow night, does it give you pause about the idea of moving on someday where clearly the tendency to stretch the rules becomes a little more of an issue?
COACH STEVENS: First of all, I'm here to talk about the national championship game, certainly not to judge anything that I don't know directly about. I'll be quite honest, I don't read the reports. I don't know what's going on in all of those situations.

Q. A general question about corruption in your sport.
COACH STEVENS: Well, I think there's a lot more good guys. I think there's a lot of good people in this sport. I've been fortunate enough to get to know a lot of 'em and spend a lot of time with 'em. I think certainly we're always going to sensationalize things that are not going well.
But I think what I try to do, what we try to do, is just try to do the best job that we can. I want to operate with as much integrity as I possibly can every single day. I want our players to understand that when they move on. I've said before, the results don't matter then the process and the way you go about things.
At the same time, you know, again, I'm not talking about anyone else but how we try to do things. And, you know what, there are a lot of people in this business that probably don't get talked enough about at a high, high level that set a great standard and a great example for our younger coaches in this business.

Q. Understanding your contentment at Butler, the fit of family and school, your admiration for Barry and vision, do you and your wife talk about this is a place you can retire? Do you ever think, What could take me away?
COACH STEVENS: Here's the point. I think people always look at their job and you hear people say this all the time, that the grass is greener somewhere else. Well, I think we recognize the grass is very green at Butler. Butler's been terrific to us. Butler's gone in a lot of ways out of their way for us. We recognize that.
Certainly we appreciate everything that this place has done for us, even when I first got the job and was not making a whole lot of money but had a key to Hinkle. Certainly there can be green grass at other places. You understand that. You see people go through it. You see sometimes it works out for people and sometimes it doesn't.
But I've said this many times. We're happy. Like I was telling Dan the other day when he asked about when everybody talks about you and has an opinion about you, there's really only two people that I'll consult in that matter: myself and my wife.
You know, I do think sometimes it's funny to listen to some of the talk because some of it's out in left field and a lot of it's speculation.

Q. For the second year in a row you've won the hearts of many across the nation, including some people who probably don't typically follow basketball. How does that resonate with you beyond the stoic Brad Stevens look that we get from you so often?
COACH STEVENS: It's a little overwhelming. It's a little overwhelming.
You know what I enjoyed about this season was life got a little bit back to normal. And I have a feeling April, May, and June may not be normal again. But that's okay.
I think, again, our guys have done such a great job of representing our school and our city. You hear all kinds of stories from back home about how much people are enjoying it, and really all over the world, how much people are enjoying it. If we can bring that to light that, you know, these guys play really good basketball, but they have some things about them that just draw people to them, I think that's great.
I'm a fan of teams like Butler in other sports. As I'm watching and rooting for teams, you know, I heard the question the next thing we move on to is the NBA draft. The next thing I'm moving on to is the Masters, and I'm hoping I find somebody who I don't know anything about who wins at the end so I can root for them.
It's the fun thing about sports and it's fun to be the team that everybody is talking about in that light.

Q. You said last night and again today that during the Duke game, after the Duke game, even after watching film, you weren't upset because your team played as well as it could play. If your team plays as well as it can play tomorrow, do you think you'll be a national championship?
COACH STEVENS: That's a great question. If it plays as well as it can, we'll have a shot. And I think that's what we had against Duke.
If both teams play as well as they can, it will be a heck of a basketball game. If we play as well as we can, we'll have a shot. UConn is the same way, though.
We've both played nail-biters all the way through and they've been playing them, had five games before this in the Big East tournament. That's a great example. That was awesome to watch. What a great five days to watch basketball. We had already won our conference tournament, so it was really good. I didn't have to worry about whether we were in or not. We were all rooting for UConn because it was a great story, a lot of fun to follow.
I don't know that. But I know this: if we don't, even if we don't, but if we prepare well and we give effort, then I'll be okay with that. I'll be able to live through that.

Q. During college football, do you root for Boise and TCU?
COACH STEVENS: You bet. I have to say I'm one of the guys screaming at the TV when TCU doesn't get a spot to play for the national championship. I was told this, I never saw this, but I guess Kellen Moore was at our game last year in Salt Lake City wearing a Butler T-shirt. That's pretty cool. Our guys rallied around that. Every time Boise would play, they'd be talking about that the next morning. I think that's a pretty neat deal.
Certainly we understand what they're going through in a lot of ways.

Q. I don't remember what your job was at Eli Lilly. Could you refresh my memory. How did your experience in that corporate world kind of form the way you've coached? Will you or have your guys ever practiced half-court shots?
COACH STEVENS: They shoot 'em. They shoot 'em a lot. Everybody shoots 'em a lot in play. Certainly we have plays where they'll shoot 'em in practice.
It's such a low-percentage shot, I believe so much in deliberate practice, we're going to shoot a lot more threes than halfcourters and a lot more jump hooks than halfcourters. But you do practice them a little bit.
My job at Eli Lilly was a marketing associate. I think it taught me the short time I was there how to be a professional. What comes with going to work from 8:30 to 5:00, whatever the case may be: the hours are a lot longer at Butler, the clothes are a lot more comfortable most days, but the same things apply. You have to go, you have to do your job as well as you can. You have to lead. You have to interact with people appropriately. You have to do all those things.
Our guys need to know when they get out of here, because sometimes they go through all of this, and they've got to understand what it's like and what they need to do to be successful after they leave.

Q. Last year in the national title game guys went to classes. What are you going to do to fill up their day tomorrow?
COACH STEVENS: Obviously we'll have breakfast and film, then we'll have a shoot-around. We've got our academic advisor with us. She's got the capability in a couple, I don't know if it's tomorrow or not, I don't want to say that it is for sure, but we've Skyped into a few on the road, we've got that ability. That's good for guys that need to or are missing.
You miss three weeks of classes. It's hard. It's really hard. You have to constantly stay on top of that. We have study tables, all those things. That will remain the same. Tomorrow will be a normal game day on the road.

Q. You developed quickly a reputation of being a preparation guy, X's and O's guy. Can you explain your philosophy with preparation and how important it is? If you had any mentor in that regard, who did you learn those philosophies from? Who is the best you've seen at that?
COACH STEVENS: I've noticed that I'm a lot more relaxed. I'm a lot better when I'm organized and prepared. It's the way I operate. I can fly by the seat of the pants in some things, but I want to know what we're doing and have an idea about at least a game plan, a backup, and a backup to the backup going into the first practice as you're preparing a team. So it makes the time between your last game and your first practice pretty limited and you have to maximize it.
So that's the way I go about it. It's not the way for everybody. There's different ways to do it.
I've got a great staff that knows how I want things organized as we get ready for a game. They've done a terrific job in scouting other people, in getting both myself and the team up to speed on what we need to do once we hit the practice floor the next day.

Q. I think you have 8 or 10 guys from the state of Indiana on your team. There's a lot of comparisons with Hoosiers. The Milan High story is ingrained in the DNA of the Indiana school kids. How much has that Hoosiers ethos helped a team to be able to achieve something like this and get to this point?
COACH STEVENS: I don't know if that specifically has helped this team achieve something. But I do think this is something how a lot of these guys were raised. I was a kid that grew up 20 minutes outside of Indianapolis. Best birthday present I got when I was eight years old was a basketball hoop on my driveway. I think a lot of these guys share that.
I know that there is a passion for the game and a passion for a team in a lot of communities that goes beyond the norm. I think Connersville has been certainly much publicized, a great example of that. It's so true. You go to a game there when Matt was playing, it was such a vibrant, electric atmosphere. To think they sent 1400 people from their town to Hinkle on a Senior Day is just remarkable. That's an example of all of our Indiana kids, kind of how they've grown up.

Q. You talked about it being hard to be a 1 or 2 seed. I wonder about being a returning national finalist. Do you have to work at all to get your guys to let it go?
COACH STEVENS: Were you at the Louisville game?

Q. I was there.
COACH STEVENS: It's not easy. Louisville has a whole pre-season of preparation and really well-coached, really talented, really athletic. Our guys had a whole season of pats on their back, a whole offseason with pats on their back. We thought we were preparing really well and we got blasted. I think I learned a lot that game about just how hard this target is going to be. It took us a while.
You know what, I think we have humble guys. I just don't think we knew. It's not because we didn't ask. We asked everybody we could find. I reached out to anybody and everybody that could talk about it. But I think it's something you go through and you learn from and maybe we'll be better at it the next time.
I think there's certainly something to it. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, we'll probably have an article or two written about us during the summer. Your kids are proud and share a lot of pride in that. Everybody is talking to them about how great they are, everybody else in your league and everybody else has it circled. That's part of it.
That's the beauty of what this team has accomplished this year, in my opinion. Maybe if we're a 1 or 2 seed, we don't get here. But because we were an 8, we could play with a little bit less pressure as we enter the tournament. May have been a good thing.

Q. You mentioned a moment ago laughing at some of the speculation, things said about you. In coaching we tend to stereotype, put coaches in certain boxes. Throughout the last couple years you seem to have that narrative of being all things to all people. Does that make you uncomfortable? Do you like that? Are there things about you that you like to knock down?
COACH STEVENS: I don't really feel that way. I think what you have to do, in everything you do, you have to analyze and say, okay, is this consistent with who you want to be? Is it good for your family? That takes the cake, first and foremost, in being able to analyze situations and figure out what's best for us.
I appreciate you saying that. But, again, I think there's a human element to all of this that certainly I'm watching all the coaches either change places or their assistants change places, whatever the case may be. I know there's a lot of unsettled families, families trying to grasp and wrap their arms around what's next.
So that's why it's such a personal thing for us, personal thing for me. But I've just been fortunate to be in a place that I consider to be consistent with where I want to be and who I want to coach.
Again, there can be other places like that. But I know we have one here.

Q. When you left Eli Lilly to go to Butler, was it truly as an unpaid assistant? If so, how does one do that? You could not have been married at the time.
COACH STEVENS: I wasn't. I was dating my college girlfriend. She decided at the same time to go to law school. Her mom was fighting cancer. She got to go home to Cleveland and live with her for two of the last three years of her life, which was a really, in retrospect, a wonderful thing for her to be able to do. We both kind of went our own ways and chased our dreams. We're married now. We've been together for a long, long time.
But it was to be an unpaid basically graduate student manager. I was going to take graduate classes. I was going to work camps. That's how I was going to make a little bit of change, try to see if I couldn't, you know, make that work until an opportunity presented itself. And when it did, I was fortunate enough that they hired me.

Q. You talked a moment ago about making decisions consistent with who you want to be. When you're not stuck in the day-to-day business of basketball, do you ever try to think down the road who that coach would be? Is there anybody out there that would provide sort of a course that you could follow?
COACH STEVENS: Yeah, it's an interesting question because I think coaching's really hard. I've gotten to know that over time. Every time you coach another game, you recognize how much harder it is.
I think I was prepared for that by the people that were before me. We prepare for every game like it's, you know, our Super Bowl. We try our best to make sure our team is prepared.
But I think, if anything, I look at some of the guys that have been at Butler and what they've meant to me, how much I admire them for the way they've conducted themselves, what kind of friends they've been to me.
If you look outside of our sport, the person that without question I admire the most, I could never even be close to as good as he is, is Tony Dungy, the way he carried himself, the way he coached his team. The Colts organization in general is a wonderful role model for Butler basketball. But Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell is very much the same. But they're not only the two finest coaches, but people I've known.

Q. You referenced earlier your adherence to preparation. How much easier is it for you with all these veterans on your team to prepare in a compressed environment like the NCAA tournament?
COACH STEVENS: You know what, it's easier because of all the stuff we went through earlier in the year. Being a more traditional team, a little bit less versatile, we have a few less options. But we had to try all those options out to see what would fit this team. It was personnel based, it was system based, it was technical based. It was a lot of things that went into that. It took some time to figure ourselves out.
Now, as you get through the tournament, if you've guarded something four different ways, you can reflect upon that way that you guarded it in discussing your next opponent. And I think that's something that's important because you've done all these different ways enough that, Okay, yeah, I remember, this is how we do it. Does that mean it's going to work? No. Does that mean that it's going to be easy to carry out? No. But at least there's some familiarity.
I think for Matt Howard, he could do it, if you told him next year at this time, on the fly because he's been through so many things. For the rest of these guys, I think it's still a process of learning and growing.
We're still a relatively young team. I know we have five seniors, but we have a lot of underclassmen doing a lot of great things. Andrew and Khyle specifically have a lot on their plate. It's been a process now that they can say, Okay, I can pick up where we left off in this certain game, this is what we want to do tomorrow, those type of things.

Q. Obviously a lot has been made about Gordon's shot. Can you recreate your thought process, what you remember from the sequence of events before the shot went up, just the idea of the foul, that sort of thing, maybe what you said to some of the guys as they were walking back?
COACH STEVENS: Well, we didn't have any timeouts left, so we knew that regardless we had to go. We had a play called in case the second one was made. Kind of ran a version of it, even though they missed.
But, you know, I think the most important thing is you still have a chance to go into overtime I think. The most he can do is make 'em both. So you're going to be down three, you have a chance.
My thinking was somewhere between, Hey, we're going to have a chance, what do we need to do? And if he makes both, are they going to foul? So those were really where my thoughts were.
I knew if he missed the second one, the way that we line up on the free-throw rebound, Gordon has a great chance of getting it, so I knew he'd have a shot to get it and we would come down, pretty good player, really good player, has the ball. You know, you take a really good player with a ball in that moment every time.

Q. Everybody thinks you don't do anything wrong, you're perfect, all this. What was the most trouble you ever got into in your childhood, life? What was the worst thing you've ever done?
COACH STEVENS: Most trouble I've ever gotten into, I don't know. But I can tell you I'm not perfect and I've gotten into trouble.
But hopefully I've grown up and learned from those things. I think anytime you're in this, you can look back and laugh a little bit. Never got into anything bad, though, and that was pretty good.
When I didn't play hard, I heard about it. That was one thing. My dad was a football player. I never forget this. When I came home from a game one time, he said, I don't know anything about basketball, but I know when you're not playing hard enough.
No, I think I probably got grounded for being late once or twice coming home. I learned my lesson. I'm sure I've made other mistakes that probably don't need to be rehashed.

Q. You mentioned before chasing your dream. As a kid, what was your dream? Is this it? As you got into coaching, how has that dream changed?
COACH STEVENS: This is not it. The dream was to be playing in it. Coaching is the closest you can get other than playing. I guess that's how the dream has changed.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach.
COACH STEVENS: Thank you.

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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 3, 2011

Matt Howard

Shelvin Mack

Andrew Smith

Brad Stevens

Chase Stigall

Shawn Vanzant