Posted: Saturday, April 3, 2010 12:00 am | Updated: 2:47 am, Sat Apr 3, 2010.
by Peter Adelsen
This weekend, the 32-4 Butler University Bulldogs will be battling for the NCAA Division 1 men's basketball championship in Indianapolis.
One player on that team is junior Alex Anglin, a 2006 Kokomo High School graduate. While on the basketball court for the Wildkats, Anglin was a North Central Conference all-conference guard-forward and captain his senior year when he averaged 10.6 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists per game.
Anglin, an accounting major at Butler, made the basketball team as a sophomore walk-on and after being fortunate to have a couple of workouts in front of the Butler coaching staff. From then on it has been a wild ride as a member of the basketball team.
"It has been a very interesting, rewarding and amazing experience from when I first joined the team to now," Anglin said.
Anglin has played in 11 games this season, but he earned his way on to a team that could be playing for a national championship on Monday.
Along the road to the Final Four this season, Anglin knew that this team was special.
"After I've seen the hard work put in and the growth of the team and its talent level, I definitely knew there was a possibility that our team could play for a national championship," he said. "We have great players and team chemistry. As a team, I guess not one person could be a NBA-type caliber (player), but as a group of five people on the court there is not one person who is greater than the other. So if we play together and everybody does their job and their role that we can play with anybody in the country."
Throughout the 2009-2010 season, the Bulldogs have played competitively with every team on its schedule. At first, it was not easy as the nation's longest current win streak at 24 may say. During the 2009 portion of the season, Butler was at 9-4, losing to Minnesota, Clemson, Georgetown and University of Alabama at Birmingham.
"We were all competitive in those games and there was stuff we could have done to win those games and we took that mindset knowing that if we played the right way we could beat any team in the country, but if we don't we could also get beat by any team in the country," he said.
From January on, the team could not lose.
"Throughout the win streak, we kept a one possession mindset that if we win every possession and focus on that possession, one game at a time, one play at a time that we can achieve what we want to achieve," he said.
The Bulldogs finished undefeated in the Horizon League to secure an NCAA Tournament bid and from then on, the team defeated Texas-El Paso 77-59, Murray State 54-52, Syracuse 63-59 and Kansas State 63-56 to come back home to Butler University as West Regional Champions.
For this year's tournament, there has been a lot of hype about brackets being busted because of mid-major teams upsetting the power teams, or in football terms, the Bowl Championship Series conference teams. In the opinion of Anglin, these upsets may not really be upsets.
"Smaller teams and teams with less money, mid-majors, they all can play basketball," he said. We were in the same pot as Murray State, which had a fantastic game against Vanderbilt and knocked them off, a SEC school. We played that team and that was our closest game in the NCAA Tournament. They are a really good team, a 31-win team. As far as upsets, those teams had a right to be there as a quality basketball team."
Another thought that has been surfacing is some people comparing Butler, a nationally ranked team for much of the season, to the movie ‘Hoosiers.'
"People are trying to have the comparison to ‘Hoosiers,' but I really don't know if it's an accurate comparison," he said. "We feel like we are one of the elite teams in college basketball and we feel like we can play with anybody and beat anybody."
With that mentality, the next step on the road is just five miles south of campus at Lucas Oil Stadium to play in the Final Four against the 28-8 Michigan State Spartans at 6:07 p.m. Saturday. With a win, they advance to the national championship on Monday to face either West Virginia or Duke at 9:21 p.m.
The atmosphere on campus
The Butler University campus is bustling with anticipation as the basketball team has made it to the Final Four.
"There is definitely a crazy Butler basketball buzz on campus, in the city and state of Indiana," Anglin said.
On Wednesday, there was a pep rally at Monument Circle where a couple thousand people came out to support the Bulldogs, he said.
On campus, the 660 student tickets were sold out in less than a minute, he said.
As for everybody else, people were standing outside Hinkle Fieldhouse at 5 a.m. Monday when tickets went on sale at noon, he said.
"Everybody is all smiles and just proud to be a Butler Bulldog, same for the alumni as well," he said.
What an experience
Alex Anglin has literally traveled internationally as a member of the Butler basketball team. He has traveled to San Jose and Salt Lake City, just during the NCAA Tournament this season. During the past year, he has traveled to Italy during the summer to play four games and visited cities such as Rome, Venice and Florence.
During the non-conference portion of the season, the team went to Anaheim to play in the 76 Classic against Minnesota, UCLA and Clemson, on that trip, the team visited Disneyland and Laguna Beach. The team also traveled to New York City to play in the Jimmy V Classic against Georgetown University. While in New York, the team visited Times Square, he said.
"It's been a great experience," he said. "I've got to experience as a team cities that we would probably never ever see unless we made a trip out with business in our careers or vacationing. As a team, you are fortunate to use the opportunity to play basketball to see cities that you would not normally see as a typical college student."
http://www.kokomoperspective.com/news/article_809d7cf8-3e84-11df-bb33-001cc4c002e0.html
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