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This Day In Sports…April 2, 2011, 15 years ago today:
All through March Madness this year, the question has been: is Cinderella dead? In just the past several years, NIL and the transfer portal have tilted the scales massively toward the power conferences. Consider the 2011 NCAA Tournament, a peak of craziness. What happened was more amazing than George Mason in 2006—and at least as amazing as Butler’s first run to the national championship game the year before. Virginia Commonwealth was playing in the Final Four.
The NCAA Tournament Committee had been roundly criticized by national hoops analysts for even selecting VCU to the Dance after the Rams had finished fourth in the Colonial Athletic Association during the regular season. But VCU went from First Four to Final Four in a dizzying 12-day stretch. It started at the debut of the First Four in Dayton, where the Rams took down fellow No. 11 seed USC 59-46 to get into the main field. Then they cast aside Georgetown and Purdue to advance to the Sweet 16 and beat Florida State in overtime to get to the Elite Eight.
Led by coach Shaka Smart, VCU capped its run to the Final Four with a stunning 71-61 win over top-seeded Kansas. And lo and behold—it would be Butler standing between the Rams and the national championship game. Despite 27 points from the VCU’s Jamie Skeen, the Bulldogs and coach Brad Stevens would finally eliminate the Rams 70-62 to become the first No. 8 seed in more than 25 years to advance to the national championship game. UConn would down Butler 53-41 to win it all.
The only all mid-major Final Four matchup since was San Diego State against Florida Atlantic in 2023. In the current college hoops climate, don’t expect it to ever happen again. The Mountain West champions rallied from a 14-point deficit by clamping down with their textbook defense, and they beat FAU dramatically 72-71 on a Lamont Butler jumper at the buzzer. SDSU advanced to face UConn in the title game, where they fell to the Huskies 76-59. (That, by the way, ended a nine-game Aztecs winning streak dating back to a 66-60 loss to Boise State at the end of February in ExtraMile Arena.)
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
