Butler Coach taking leave of absence...

[JTG]

Really? I would argue that anyone who thought he was staying at Butler for a significant amount of time had heir heads in the sand. X fans of all people should know. To add a team to your conference based on one guy like that is inherently flawed, and we are seeing that now.

Guess the BE should dial up the Flyers....nahhh !!!!!

[Xaveriana]

Not sure what's going on, but prayers go out to him. Some rumblings on twitter/Butler board that the phrase 'medical leave' is being used a bit loosely.

Two of my sources have conflicting accounts:

Source 1: I heard he swallowed his vomit during a test.
Source 2: I heard he pulled a knife on Mr. Hand

However it happened he was a good coach and a good kid.

[X-band '01]

I have been saying it since Butler joined the league that they were not as great an addition as everyone thought because they (more so than other programs) are one iffy hire away from being in big trouble. Everyone thought they could ride their Final Four runs forever, but the truth is, they never had the building blocks of a sustainable great program, unless they had a total rock star for a coach. They don't anymore, and they appear to be bottom feeders for the foreseeable future. I really think they are going to suck routinely in the Big East, and that sucks for a conference that really can't afford too many teams to suck. If there really is something legitimately wrong with Miller's health, I'm sorry to hear that. But from a basketball standpoint, I see Butler dragging the league down for awhile.

I'm not sure I completely agree with that line of logic. One of the reasons the AAC got multiple bids last year was the fact that there was a clear separation between the haves and have-nots of that league. The top teams (UC, UofL, UConn, Memphis, SMU) were able to beat up the bottom-feeders pretty effectively.

The Big East cannibalized itself during the regular season because of parity. Butler and DePaul are about as close to a gimmie during conference play as you'll find. Look at what Seton Hall (8th place team) did to Xavier and also to Villanova during the Big East tournament.

[Smails]

Two of my sources have conflicting accounts:

Source 1: I heard he swallowed his vomit during a test.
Source 2: I heard he pulled a knife on Mr. Hand

However it happened he was a good coach and a good kid.

Source 1: "He was a brown-noser Lou, you hated him"

Source 2: "No, he just called him a dick"

[bleedXblue]

Really? I would argue that anyone who thought he was staying at Butler for a significant amount of time had heir heads in the sand. X fans of all people should know. To add a team to your conference based on one guy like that is inherently flawed, and we are seeing that now.

Butler will be fine. They didn't get an invite based on Stevens alone. Come on, they had two final 4's in the last 5 years. They've hit a bump in the road.

[bleedXblue]

I'm not sure I completely agree with that line of logic. One of the reasons the AAC got multiple bids last year was the fact that there was a clear separation between the haves and have-nots of that league. The top teams (UC, UofL, UConn, Memphis, SMU) were able to beat up the bottom-feeders pretty effectively.

The Big East cannibalized itself during the regular season because of parity. Butler and DePaul are about as close to a gimmie during conference play as you'll find. Look at what Seton Hall (8th place team) did to Xavier and also to Villanova during the Big East tournament.

The Big East just wasn't very good last year.

[Milhouse]

I have been saying it since Butler joined the league that they were not as great an addition as everyone thought because they (more so than other programs) are one iffy hire away from being in big trouble. Everyone thought they could ride their Final Four runs forever, but the truth is, they never had the building blocks of a sustainable great program, unless they had a total rock star for a coach. They don't anymore, and they appear to be bottom feeders for the foreseeable future. I really think they are going to suck routinely in the Big East, and that sucks for a conference that really can't afford too many teams to suck. If there really is something legitimately wrong with Miller's health, I'm sorry to hear that. But from a basketball standpoint, I see Butler dragging the league down for awhile.

I think there was a lot of speculation that he would stick around for a LONG time after turning down UCLA. But who knows.

[ammtd34]

The Big East just wasn't very good last year.

And Butler was the worst. They're not in good shape right now at all.

[xubrew]

I have been saying it since Butler joined the league that they were not as great an addition as everyone thought because they (more so than other programs) are one iffy hire away from being in big trouble. Everyone thought they could ride their Final Four runs forever, but the truth is, they never had the building blocks of a sustainable great program, unless they had a total rock star for a coach. They don't anymore, and they appear to be bottom feeders for the foreseeable future. I really think they are going to suck routinely in the Big East, and that sucks for a conference that really can't afford too many teams to suck. If there really is something legitimately wrong with Miller's health, I'm sorry to hear that. But from a basketball standpoint, I see Butler dragging the league down for awhile.

Okay, say Murray State had held on to beat Butler in 2010 (I have a soft spot for Murray, and that game still kind of bugs me), and Pitt had beaten them in in 2011. They go out well before the Final Four both times. Butler would still be far more accomplished than any other Big East candidate with a longer sustained period of success than anyone else.

Butler finished in the top 25 for three straight years before they made their first Final Four run. They were consistently safely inside the bubble, and had been to two Sweet Sixteens prior to that as well. They weren't George Mason. They didn't go from constantly being way outside the NIT, to the Final Four, and then back into obscurity just a year later. Butler had been around for awhile, and had been good for awhile. They had gone through coaching changes, and remained solid prior to anyone even knowing who Brad Stevens was.

When you hire Barry Collier, and replace him with Thad Matta, and replace him with Todd Lickliter, and replace him with Brad Stevens, that's a sign that it's the program and not the coach that is solid. No one remembers this, but when Lickliter left everyone said Butler was done. When they were good Stevens's first year, everyone said it was because he did it with Lickliter's players. No one really seemed to think Stevens was all that great until his last year there.

[xubrew]

I think there was a lot of speculation that he would stick around for a LONG time after turning down UCLA. But who knows.

Matthew Graves seemed to think so. Had he known Stevens was going to leave, then he probably would have never left himself, and Butler probably wouldn't be in nearly as rough of shape as they are.