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.