Balls

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night to see the Chicago Bulls succumb late in the 5th game of the Eastern Conference Final against the Miami Heat.

Heat of course are the Galacticos of the NBA with a wageroll to shadow that of Manchester City and the team is less than half City’s in number.

The Bulls were ahead by 12 points with just over 3 minutes to go, but 180 seconds can be a long time in the NBA and with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade sparkling the Heat were level 2 minutes later. Then with 22 seconds on the clock Derrick Rose of all people missed from the free-throw line to level the scores at 81 each, and for the 2nd game running Miami came from behind late in the game to win after looking like they were beat. Think Man United.

Butler’s back

A year ago I wrote about a little known American university that turned the form book upside down and made it to the Final Four of North America’s biggest college basketball tournament. Imagine the boat-race, tens of thousands more fans, face painting instead of boaters, 63 more teams and a large orange ball.

For the last 3 weeks the NCAA’s College Basketball Championship has been taking place over different nights in different cities – think the FA Cup on speed – and this weekend in Houston the final four teams compete to win the coveted trophy first contested for in 1939.

I adopted Butler University as my basketball college team purely because I had a few Chicago friends, and one in particular go there. I got taken to a few games and I was drawn in by their history and it’s general underdog charm.

Last year Butler lost the final by two points to probably the most foremost college basketball team there is, Duke. This year Butler made the Championship finals again but where as last year the experts marked them down as a good outside bet, this year they weren’t given a chance.

But in the 1st round they turned over Old Dominion, they then sent reverberations around the country by beating number 1 seed Pittsburgh or Pitt as they are commonly known. Next round was against the other college close to my heart, Wisconsin but Butler turned the Badgers over and met another favourite Florida State in the Elite Eight.

To everyone’s surprise in overtime Butler beat Florida, a school with 10 times as many students as Butler, and thus this tiny very proud school, with a decent soccer team as well, moved onto the competitions Final Four this weekend.

So, this Saturday Butler will face another surprise Final Four college finalist, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The winners will meet one of the big shots from the University of Kansas (UK) or the University of Connecticut (UConn). You can always tell a big powerful American college by it’s intials. Butler has no such charm or prerogative but just like Charlton, they are my team and I am proud to support them.