Credit Butler coach Brad Stevens with the line of the weekend, a line from Saturday afternoon that had lasting power thoughout the weekend quartet games that set the Final Four.When analyst Len Elmore asked Stevens if he was excited about his team "going home" to Indianapolis for the Final Four after beating Kansas State, the coach offered a correct and off-hand, "Well, we were going home no matter what," and he was not begin smart with his response -- just accurate.
Maybe that matter-of-fact approach played a part in the team's success.
It sounded a bit like Elmore was taken aback by the response, though. He recovered from it initially, seeming to laugh along with the obvious punch line for which he had played the straight man, but Elmore then made reference to "going home" a couple more times in their brief post-game interview, which either hinted that he was ticket at Edwards for hitting his softball question out of the park or at himself for asking it in the first place.
It was not dead after the game, either. On Sunday, when Jim Nance and Clark Kellogg talked about games during the Final Four during the end of their work on Duke-Baylor, Nance again mentioned Butler going home, and he sounded like he was smiling when he said it.
Apparently, the matter had become a bit of shared an inside joke -- and hopefully because it was a good thing and not because anyone thought Elmore was at fault or Stevens was being disrespectful.