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Dreams season ends for VCU, Smart

By Matt Fortuna
Special to NCAA.org

HOUSTON — Shaka Smart leaned in and studied the question as if it was spoken in another language, glossing over the entire Butler preface and all the parallels his Virginia Commonwealth University team had drawn to the one that was headed to the national championship game.

"Could you see VCU doing the same, or do you think this is a once-in-a-lifetime run?"

Never mind that just a year earlier, Butler coach Brad Stevens had confronted the same doubts.

A short while later, Stevens would walk into the same room, another national semifinal victory under his belt, another national title game to prepare for Monday night, a sort of routine for the 34-year-old mid-major coach. One that seemed unthinkable little more than 12 months earlier.

Last year Stevens came out after Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, a man who could scoff at such a question.

Izzo was in his second straight Final Four last season, his sixth overall. His Spartans failed to reach the final, a victim of Stevens' Bulldogs and their suffocating defense. The same machine that just chewed up and spat out another title-game hopeful minutes earlier on this Saturday night in Reliant Stadium, when Butler completed its 70-62 triumph over VCU.

Better offers followed Izzo, who turned down a leap to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the National Basketball Association. He returned the pre-season No. 2 team in the country. It barely sneaked into the NCAA tournament before bowing out in the first round. Many expect a similar fate for VCU following this run, an unprecedented five-game winning streak all the way from the First Four to the Final Four.

The Rams play in the Colonial Athletic Association, a conference they could not even win this year. They lose four seniors, three of whom were starters. And they boast the hottest coach in the country, a 33-year-old who will in all likelihood face bigger and better offers just like Izzo, the last coach whose Final Four run was ended by Butler.

"Right now a thousand percent of my focus is on our guys, our seniors, honoring them," Smart would later say in the defeated locker room. "I haven't even thought about tonight, as opposed to let alone next year. But that's my plan.

Minutes earlier freshman Rob Brandenberg, chewing on a cookie alone in front of his locker, said he did not feel spoiled by this run to the Final Four in his first year as a college student, by this attention and adoration America had placed on its new favorite underdog

Brandenberg and his teammates were told entering the game to watch Butler guard Shelvin Mack when he's outside the 3-point line. Mack made 5 of 6 3-point attempts, scoring a team-high 24 points. Three of them came with Brandenberg guarding him, and Smart spoke in his postgame news conference about the valuable lesson the freshman learned Saturday night, one he hopes the entire team will learn.

Smart adapted to his players, as much adapting as one needs to do when he looks like he could be one of them. He did not pretend to ignore the critics, did not pretend to ignore the sting of defeat as he bit his lip, placed his hand over his mouth, and held back tears walking off the court for the final time this season.

"Everyone talks about the way that we've utilized the media doubting us," he said moments later at the podium. "I made the decision at the beginning of the NCAA tournament that we could either ignore what people were saying or we could go right back at 'em. And with today's social media, today's media, it's so hard to ignore. So our guys did a great job of sinking their teeth into that. And it brought our team closer together, brought our players really tight."

Smart's players rallied around him after their victory over Kansas last Sunday, when he revealed the news to a Sports Illustrated reporter that his wife was pregnant. They did so again this week, after his grandfather — whom he called the second-biggest influence in his life — passed away Tuesday.

“Oh it's been quite a bit," he said of the emotional roller-coaster that was this week. "But that's life. You can't control life. That's what my college coach said: 'That's life on life's terms.'

"It's been emotional. It's been a tough time for my family. But as I always say, it's too late to cancel the games. That had nothing to do really with tonight's game."

Seconds later he was embraced by longtime CAA commissioner Tom Yeager, who has now watched two of his coaches make unlikely Final Four runs after Jim Larranaga's George Mason team made it this far five years ago

Smart's team ended George Mason's 16-game winning streak a month earlier, the longest in the nation at the time, when VCU gained an essential victory in the CAA tournament. The Rams could not duplicate that Saturday night, failing to end the nation-leading 13-game winning streak.

Moments after the loss Smart's tan coat was finally back on, the way it hadn't been from tip-off to the media room, where he tried his best to put a bright spin on a night gone wrong for VCU.

Smart sat back in his chair as his players fielded questions beside him. He clenched his jaw. He was asked about the postseason run, about what it means, about his thoughts on Monday night's title game.

"I'm not a prognosticator,” he said. “If I was, I could probably get a better record than some of those guys."

Question after question passed, nine in all, before Question No. 10, the penultimate one of a news conference that could not end soon enough, gave Shaka Smart one last chance to remind everyone a little bit about himself:

"Could you see VCU doing the same, or do you think this is a once-in-a-lifetime run?"

"You don't know me very well if you ask that."

Matt Fortuna is a senior in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State University,