The Best of Butler

Sure, Connecticut won the title. That's nice and all for them. But as far as @briefreads is concerned, the best stories that came from the National Championship game were about this year's runner-up. Three premiere writers penned stories on Butler and what its historic season meant, and how about "this was about a lot more than some basketball game."

Read them and post your favorite NCAA tournament stories in the comments (we wouldn't mind seeing a Huskies entry, either):

@michaelkruse / St. Pete Times
Ailing Butler grads words inspired basketball team

Matt has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, which has stolen from him his ability to move, talk, swallow or breathe on his own. A ventilator pumps air through a tube into his throat. The only things he can still move are his eyes. He communicates by blinking — different letters for different numbers of blinks — and he operates a special computer system with tiny movements of his eyes.

But he can still think, and feel, and last week he took more than 10 hours to write a 976-word e-mail he sent to the Butler coach. The coach read it to the players before Saturday's semifinal game.

@JPosnanski / Sports Illustrated
In an excruciating night for Butler, the ball just would not go in

When good basketball players, no matter what level, shoot a ball they expect it to go in. This is the most natural part of the game for them. They have been shooting balls at baskets much of the lives -- in driveways, in parks, in YMCAs, in high school gymnasiums. They have seen the ball go in hundreds of thousands of times. One of my favorite people, Jackie Stiles, grew up in a little town in Kansas called Claflin, and every single day she would make a thousand shots. She would not SHOOT a thousand shots, no. She would make a thousand. When you make a thousand shots a day, you make more than 350,000 shots a year, you make a million shots every three years, and made shots become part of your soul. When she was in college, Stiles almost singlehandedly led the school then called Southwest Missouri State to the women's Final Four. She knew, in a way she could never put into words, that when she shot the basketball it was going in.

@DanWetzel / Yahoo! Sports
Butler goes down its way

And that’s when Ronald Nored, eyes red and tear-filled as well, noticed his teammates, got up, crossed the locker room and reminded everyone what this entire pursuit is about.

Scar tissue

Alexandra Zayas (St. Petersburg Times): TAMPA — Alone, she stood in a hospital bathroom, peering into a small mirror at a woman she had never seen — herself, the new Audrey Mabrey.

She'd been beaten, doused with gasoline and set afire. She had awakened from a coma to excruciating skin-stretching therapy. She had mustered the strength to get out of bed

But she hadn't yet looked.

Now here she stood, one-on-one with the burn scars that covered 80 percent of her body. Her eyes fell on her deformed mouth.

The bathroom light was dim. That was the only mercy. She would avoid the next mirror she saw, and the one after that.

But she wouldn't hide forever.

Not the new Audrey.

-eddie

The Brief Reads of Chico Harlan

This is our monthly series of briefreads written by some of the most respected bylines to date. It’s a look at how these reporters got to where they are now — at national magazines, writing novels, winning major awards — because they mastered great stories on deadline. We ask: Can you see the evolution of a journalist?

• • •

Chico Harlan's datelines span three continents from America to Australia to Asia. It’s a wanderlust, the former sportswriter wrote. Then, there are his stories from every stop. The coverage of the Washington Nationals, his uncle a Hare Krishna, to the 8.9-magnitude quake that leveled a country’s coast.

In the wake of Japan’s recent events, Harlan leads the Washington Post’s coverage; the limelight of international interest. To Hiroshima, here’s how he got there:

“McNamara earns permanent place in Scranton's heart,” The Daily Orange, Feb. 20, 2003
Cheers, to Gerry McNamara, from the Guinness line at Cosgrove's Clubhouse & Tavern, where never before could one 19-year-old Irish boy claim so many unacquainted cousins.

“A day in the life of a deer hunter,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 28, 2006
The deer within his sight ambled 20 yards to the right and stopped. "A perfect shot," Mr. Brown said, hushed.

But he never pulled the trigger.

“Coping with memories,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Feb. 28, 2008
Let me say now: (Myron) Cope, as a writer, was awesome... His style worked precisely because it felt inimitable.

“Perfect warrior with an imperfect game,” Sydney Daily-Telegraph, Jan. 28, 2008
On one particular point during the second set, Novak Djokovic had reduced Lleyton Hewitt into a human yo-yo, sending him down, sending him up, and sending him back along the baseline.

“Unusual Season Plays Out Until the Very End,” Washington Post, October 5, 2009
Good baseball, granted, did not appear until the very end.

• • •

Post your favorite Chico Harlan briefreads or tweet us @briefreads. Who else's career should we look back at? (Send us the journalist and the briefreads that made the reporter.)

-eddie