Butler carries 'Hoosiers' pride into Final Four

You're a Hoosier this week.

Who needs new-mown hay and moonlight on the Wabash?

You're a Butler fan.

You're pulling for the hometown team that plays its games not far from the indoor Indianapolis football stadium where the Final Four will be held.

You're pulling for the school whose field house is the same field house where, 56 years ago, a high school from team Milan, Ind., enrollment 161, won the all-comers, one-class Indiana state high school basketball tournament, the Milan Miracle, later memorialized in that granddaddy of a sports flicker, "Hoosiers."

You're pulling for Butler as it heads into its semifinal against Michigan State because you loved "Hoosiers." If you were trapped down a mine shaft, and crews couldn't get to you, and you were running out of air, but somebody lowered a screen and DVD player down and Gene Hackman was giving a pep talk to Hickory, you'd go, "Hey, Hoosiers!"

It makes you glad the director cut those scenes that would have killed the thing:

The car chase.

"Shooter" and Barbara Hershey - it just happens.

Jimmy Chitwood's "We're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game. We're talking about practice," news conference.

As Gene the Dream said.

"This is your team."

You're a kid shooting at a rim hanging over a barn door this week. You're Bobby Plump - Bobby Plump, the real live country boy shooting star on that Milan team, who won the state title with one last shot, who is alive and well.

He went on to play for ... Butler.

Some fools up there did away with the all-comers Indiana high school tournament late last century. A lot of Hoosiers have never forgiven their beloved treasure being gutted in the name of four classes.

I was talking to an Indiana native - an Indianapolis native - the other day. His name is Jake Query, and he's as good as any other Indiana native, since he's about basketball no matter where he is. I met Jake during a rain delay at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, where he was an announcer for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network.

But he heard me talking about Butler and the Final Four, and he got hot all over.

He hopped into the conversation. He later introduced himself.

He played high school ball at Indianapolis North Central. He lives near the Butler campus. He has been to a ton of Butler games the last four years (though he attended Indiana). He played high school games at Hinkle.

"In Indiana, basketball is religion and Hinkle is Mecca," Jake said.

What does he think of "Hoosiers"?

"What do Catholics think of the Pope?"

Might be a bad time to make that comparison, but you get the idea.

For a lot of Hoosiers, Butler at the Final Four feels like justice - they all lost their all-comers tournament, but now a small school, at least by NCAA standards, is going to the summit. And it's their school.

Jake Query was talking about his grandfather, Henry, who went to Butler. Henry died 15 years ago. He rests in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. So do former president Benjamin Harrison former Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger and Ovid Butler, the abolitionist who founded Butler University in 1855. What a frontcourt.

Jake said, "When I get back home, I'm going to get the newspaper headline that said Butler is going to the Final Four, get it laminated and take it to my grandfather's grave, dust off his stone and lay it on top."

We're Butler fans this week.

This is your team.