Breaking Down the Wild Finish to the Butler-Pittsburgh Game

If you missed the game between the #1 seeded Pittsburgh Panthers and the #8 seeded Butler Bulldogs, don’t worry. You only missed one of the wildest finishes in the history of the NCAA Tournament, as Butler defeated Pitt 71-70 to make their second straight trip to the Sweet 16.

Ultimately though, it was case of two teams writing a similar story. For Pitt, this loss was yet another early round exit as a top seed in the Big Dance. For Butler, it’s a step towards being considered a legitimate powerhouse in college basketball.

Now, let’s talk about the ending to this game:

Pitt leads by one with about seven seconds to go. Butler gets a layup by Andrew Smith on a nice dish from Shawn Vanzant with about three seconds left. This is exactly the kind of play that you want in this situation. Quick guard penetrates and draws the help defense to him, and passes to a wide open big man for a score. Butler up one.

We see a lot of teams throw the ball in way too short in a situation like this. But Pitt smartly throws a pass almost to midcourt, and then gets a dribble in before…..Shelvin Mack commits a foul. We’ve got about a second left. Gilbert Brown to the line for Pitt.

And now lets talk about one particular facet that could go overlooked in this whole deal. As the refs are checking to make sure the time is right, Mack is standing at the free throw and is pretty much letting Brown know how big these free throws are. The pressure is on, and Mack makes sure he knows it. Whoever was doing the commentary was complaining that he didn’t like the showmanship by Mack. I say bologna. VERY smart move on his part, since he just committed one of the worst fouls in school history. So, of course, Brown hits the first…..and missed the second. Tie game. Ball comes off the rim…..

Then we get another foul that will go down in history. Nasir Robinson jumps on the back of Matt Howard on the rebound, and the whistle blows. Now, before Jamie Dixon gets absolutely ripped, let’s step back and think about this for a second.

When Brown first goes to the line, Pitt is down by a single point. He hits the first. The game is tied. So should Dixon have cleared the line here? The answer is no. There’s a potential for an offensive rebound and a putback to win the game. Should Dixon really just clear the line and play for overtime if his guy misses the free throw? I say absolutely not. You play to win the game. And more importantly, you have to make plays to win the game.

What if Robinson rips the ball away from Howard and scores at the buzzer? He would have made a play to win the game. In this case, he committed a bad error and Howard won the game for Butler. But you don’t just give up the possibility of winning the game to be conservative so that something like this doesn’t happen. Robinson just made a bad decision. You have to put your players in a position to win the game. Dixon did that, and I have no problem with him leaving his players on the line.

The point of the matter is this: has an offensive player ever got a rebound at the end of the game on a missed free throw and won his team the game? Sure he has. On the other hand, has an offensive player ever committed an over the back foul in a late-game situation, which resulted in the either team shooting free throws? You bet.

So don’t blame Dixon for letting his players try to make a play.

Turns out, they just made the wrong one in this specific situation. 90 (or more) times out of 100, this isn’t the result. Howard gets the rebound and comes up short on a full court is what would happen in most cases. But it didn’t here, and Pitt was met with the worst-case scenario.

As for whether the referees should have called the foul, well, that’s an easy one too. Mack clearly fouled Brown, and Robinson clearly fouled Howard. So why shouldn’t they have called the foul? For once, we can’t blame the refs for this one. They did their job and made the right call in both situations.

Like Brad Stevens said after the game, you hate to see a game end like this. If Brown makes both free throws, then Mack is the one in Robinson’s shoes right now. You don’t want to see a college kid have to go through something like that.

But again, basketball is all about making plays. Just so happens that the plays made at the end of this game were bad plays instead of good plays.

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