MEMPHIS – The sights on Thursday inside FedEx Forum resembled, if such a thing existed, a college basketball fantasy camp. John Calipari ambled down a corridor to a news conference while Lonzo Ball walked a just a few feet behind, freshly finished with practice. Roy Williams limped past Tyus Edney. UCLA players crammed into a closet-sized locker room, separated by a four-foot hallway from the North Carolina headquarters. Hall of Famers and NCAA Tournament legends filled the place.
Also, Chris Holtmann ran his Butler Bulldogs through layup lines.
For those present at FedEx Forum this weekend, the Final Four may approach anticlimax. The South Region scrum between No. 1 seed North Carolina, No. 2 Kentucky, No. 3 UCLA and – who’s the fourth team again? Oh, sorry, No. 4 Butler – promises to deliver more historical heft, more star power and more coaching eminence than whatever the national semifinals produce in Glendale, Ariz.
The three blue bloods have combined for 54 Final Four appearances and 24 national championships. Two coaches (Calipari and Williams) are already in the Hall of Fame, and another (Steve Alford) led Indiana – one of the few programs who could elbow into the neighborhood of the South Region powers – to a national title as a player. Ball, the UCLA point guard, might be the first player chosen in the NBA Draft, and fellow freshmen Malik Monk and De’Aaron Fox of Kentucky probably won’t be far behind.
If this quartet wound up in a Final Four, nobody would complain. Instead, starting with North Carolina-Butler and the truly heavyweight Kentucky-UCLA, they will jostle for one ticket to Glendale.
“This is why you play college basketball,” UCLA guard Bryce Alford said. “As a hooper, these are the games you remember playing in. Of the top-five mix, I don’t know how many are going to be in this game, but there’s going to be quite a few.”
Subplots tumble out of the region. The traditional powers have already engaged in two of the best games of the regular season, with Kentucky beating UNC, 103-100, in Las Vegas and UCLA downing Kentucky, 97-92, at Rupp Arena.
Calipari will coach at FedEx Forum for the first time since he left Memphis eight years ago, after building the Tigers into a national force while running afoul of the NCAA enough for a Final Four banner to come down. Calipari insisted he understood the anger of some.
“Kentucky is one that you leave for. It just is,” Calipari said, in a reasonable defense. “I don’t remember all of it. But there was no intent to offend anybody. It was just – it’s Kentucky. It’s Kentucky.”
Friday night, though, Calipari may learn how long Memphians’s memory can be. Edney, now a UCLA assistant coach and a hero from the 11th and most recent UCLA national title, in 1995, was wearing UCLA gear as he sauntered down a Memphis street Wednesday night. A passerby recognized him and shouted, “You gotta beat Cal!”
It is fair to assume nobody stopped any Butler assistants on the street. The Bulldogs practiced Thursday fully aware of their status as the Other Team. Its head coach, Holtmann, was able to reel off the accomplishments of Williams, his opposite Friday night, like a kid remembering the stats off a baseball card.
“I think between he and I, we have eight Final Fours, two national championships, about 15 Sweet 16s, and a ton of conference championships and over 900 wins,” Holtmann said. “So somebody is going to be really calm come opening tip and somebody is going to be really nervous. I’ll let you figure that out.”
Since 2010, Butler has played in two national title games, more than Carolina and UCLA combined. Butler beat North Carolina in both 2012 and 2014, the latter many current Heels and Bulldogs participated in.
“They just out-toughed us,” UNC point guard Nate Britt recalled. Butler last played UCLA in 2009; the Bulldogs won that one, too. This season, they beat defending national champion Villanova twice on their way to a fourth seed and a No. 21 national ranking.
“We don’t look at Butler as being any kind of letdown from the other top seeds,” Britt said. “Someone asked me, ‘You look at our side, and you look at UCLA, Kentucky and Carolina being the great teams,’ and I was about to say, ‘And Butler.’ You can never put Butler out of that, or forget about Butler. They have been a good team, and they are a good team.”
Butler players are separated from their competition this weekend, most of all, by pedigree. While they went overlooked in high school, future Bruins, Tar Heels and Wildcats were being wooed by the powerhouses.
“It’s all high-level players in each one of the locker rooms,” UNC’s Justin Jackson said. “I’m sure guys on UCLA got letters from us. I’m sure Coach talked to some guys on Kentucky. We’re playing against guys who could have gone anywhere.”
Kelan Martin, a Louisville native who leads Butler with 16 points per game, recollected his recruitment thusly: “I was never looked at by Louisville or Kentucky.” Andrew Chrabascz, Butler’s second-leading scorer, chose Butler over St. Joseph’s, Rhode Island and Creighton.
Avery Woodson, a transfer from Memphis, took a bit of a different path. “Everybody keeps wanting me to contrast and compare Butler and Memphis, but I can’t,” Woodson said. “It’s like eating barbecue and comparing barbecue and Olive Garden. You can’t do it. It’s two totally different things.”
The comparison between Butler and the college hoops royalty encircling it may not be quite as extreme as salad-and-breadsticks vs. brisket-and-collards. But it’s close. Butler will be surrounded by three of the great programs in college basketball. The Bulldogs recognize it, but they feel something more than fortunate to be present.
“For sure,” Chrabascz said. “But I also view Butler as a powerhouse.”