April 11th Blog

This past week, Indianapolis has had a huge amount of excitement. Although Indianapolis has hosted the a NCAA Final Four and championship game before, we have never had a home team in the championship game. The weekend, and early week was filled with preparation for the big game.
The entire city of Indianapolis put so much focus on Butler. Pretty much the entire state was excited for Butler, and the Bulldog players and team were very grateful for the attention they received. The outcome of the game wasn't what anyone wanted. Pretty much the entire state was disappointed, and proud at the same time. The question I have is, does playing in the same state and somewhat having a "home court advantage" help or hurt the team? I think that this could go both ways. The city definitely put an extreme focus on how much of an accomplishment this was for Butler and the state of Indiana. I feel like this may have put extra pressure of the team to do well and win, so that they could be even more happy, and make the state happy as well. However, this extra emphasis put on Butler could have also pushed them to continue on, and defeat Michigan St. in the Final Four game, which lead to the championship game. Either way, Butler definitely played their hearts out and deserved the respect and applause that they received at the end of the championship game. One thing is for sure, everyone is excited for what is to come next year with the Butler Bulldogs.