Method To Brad Stevens' Madness

Method to Brad Stevens' Madness




Saturday, March 21, 2015
By:  Steve Bulpett




SAN ANTONIO — Brad Stevens hadn’t tweeted in a year and a half, but he couldn’t hold back after his old team won its NCAA tourney opener Thursday.

When Butler took down Texas, 56-48, @BCCoachStevens tweeted, “Way to go Dawgs!!! March on!”

When his return to the social-media platform and the lengthy absence were noted yesterday, the Celtics coach smiled and said, “It might be another year and a half before I tweet again.”
On the other end of the spectrum with that game’s outcome was Texas product Avery Bradley.

“Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it,” the Celtics guard said before the morning walkthrough. “They just fell short. That’s all I’m going to say. I don’t want to comment about the game.”

He and Stevens didn’t engage in any pregame trash talk, though Bradley said, “I was going to bet him for a dinner, but I decided not to. I knew he would probably say, ‘No, I’m not betting.’ I saved myself some money.”

Said Stevens of the potential bet, “I don’t want to do that to him.”

Asked if he was surprised at the outcome, the coach said, “Not as surprised as some of the experts.”

Having led Butler to consecutive national title games and fashioned a .772 winning percentage with the Bulldogs, the start of the NCAA tournament will always interest Stevens.

“I didn’t see a ton of them,” he said of the Thursday games. “I watched that one (Butler-Texas) and the end of a couple of others, but we’ve got our hands full here. Most of our time is spent getting ready for (last night’s Celtics-Spurs game) and continuing to work with our prep.

“But obviously you’ve got the TV on and it’s an exciting time of year and it’s fun to watch, especially when you’ve got a rooting interest. I still have a lot of guys that I worked for or worked with that are still in the tournament, as well as, obviously, Butler and all those kids that I was fortunate enough to coach, and a lot of those staff members I was fortunate enough to work with.”

Stevens was not shocked to see so many highly rated teams losing or being taken to the wire by double-digit seeds.

“I think that’s been the case for a while now,” he said. “The deal is, and I think it’s one of the neat things about Butler being a high seed quite often the last few years and done pretty well, but it’s hard to be wearing white in the tournament, because the tournament was built on the underdog.

“If you’re that higher seed, you can feel that pressure coming late in the game if it’s a close game. So it doesn’t surprise me at all when I see these results, because you know they’re going to be close games, and one team is playing free with nothing to lose. The other team feels like the weight of the world’s on their shoulders. That’s part of the human nature element of the buildup we’ve created with the tournament.

“I’ve been on both sides of it. I always said when we drew Bucknell the one year, I was like, ‘Oh, man, not Bucknell. Anybody but Bucknell.’ Luckily, our guys were Bucknell at one point. They were the team nobody knew much about that ended up winning. So we knew how to go into that game the right way. But you’d much rather play a big-name school if you’re a smaller school, per se.”

Asked what he misses about this week, Stevens said, “I’m just happy for the people that get a chance to experience it. I got a chance to live it. It was unbelievable to live. It was better to live because of who I was with. But I got a chance to do that, and other people are getting their opportunity to do that, and it’s fun to see. You know the feelings some of those places are going through, and I’ve got a lot of friends that are still alive, so it’s fun to watch.”




bob



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What a difference between now and the beginning of the season in terms of Celtics players capitalizing on opportunities.

Sam