“In the best John Feinstein tradition” ( Booklist ) the greatest college basketball story in decades—the Butler Bulldogs and their improbable run to two straight NCAA National Championship games—now updated in paperback. Butler University in Indianapolis became the smallest school in forty years to reach the NCAA championship game. Calculated as a 200-to-1 shot to win, Butler came this close to beating the heavily favored, perennial leaders of college basketball: the Duke Blue Devils in 2010. And in 2011, Butler advanced again to the finals, ultimately losing to UConn—but accomplishing so much. Underdawgs tells the incredible and uplifting story. Butler’s coach, thirty-three-year-old Brad Stevens, looked so young he was often mistaken for one of the players, but he had quickly become one of the best coaches in the nation by employing the Butler Way. This philosophy of basketball and life, adopted by the program, is based on five principles: humility, passion, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness. Even the most casual observer could see this in every player, on the court and off, from 2010 NBA first-round draft pick Gordon Hayward to the last guy on the bench. Much more than a sports story, Underdawgs is the consummate David vs. Goliath tale—the Bulldogs proved they belonged in the spotlight and, in the process, won the hearts of sports fans everywhere. "If you want to learn how basketball is played in its purest form--the team game--learn all you can about Butler hoops. They represent what college basketball is all about!" --Dick Vitale David Woods is an Urbana, Illinois native who has won national and state awards for his sports reporting. Woods has covered five Olympic games for The Indianapolis Star , and he has been that paper’s beat writer for Butler basketball since 2001. He maintains the “Bulldog Insider” blog for IndyStar.com and is also the author of The Butler Way: The Best of Butler Basketball , a history of the program, published regionally in 2009. He and his wife, Jan, and their two daughters live in Indianapolis. Underdawgs PROLOGUE TWO MINUTES FROM GLORY The sun set in the west, spring showers were falling, and the Duke Blue Devils were on the verge of a national championship. It was April 5, 2010, and normalcy had returned to college basketball. Duke was overriding a fictional tale with the facts. The Blue Devils were too big, too talented, too tough, and too well coached to lose to a small-college team that began the NCAA Tournament as a 200-to-1 shot. It did not matter that most of the 70,930 in attendance on a Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium—a $720 million palace built for the National Football League’s Indianapolis Colts—were cheering for Butler. Or that most wanted to witness American sports history. Indiana’s governor, Mitch Daniels, said he was anticipating the greatest upset “since Lake Placid,” where an underdog USA hockey team beat the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Downtown was bustling all weekend with fans wearing Butler gear and shouting, “Go Dawgs!” That contrasted to the previously tepid fan support for the Bulldogs in their home city. In college sports, this was as close to rags to riches as it gets. Butler once considered abandoning major college basketball, sent teams traveling in an old limousine called the “Blue Goose,” played before crowds of fewer than 1,000, and didn’t cover the full cost of players’ scholarships. Among college basketball Goliaths, Butler was a David, except without the stone. Butler had the smallest school (enrollment: 4,200) in the NCAA championship game in 40 years. This was a real-life version of Hickory, the fictional team in the movie Hoosiers, based on the true story of Milan High School, which beat an opponent with an enrollment 10 times larger to win Indiana’s state tournament in 1954. Movie scenes were filmed in Hinkle Fieldhouse, the 82-year-old arena where the Bulldogs played. Hollywood wasn’t in control, though. Duke was. The Blue Devils were ahead, 60–55, and fewer than two minutes remained. It had been tense, taut, tenacious labor. The teams were never separated by more than six points. Butler had trailed in the second half of all five of its 2010 NCAA Tournament victories, but not by this many points this late in the game. In the tournament, Duke had become the first to score as many as 60 points against the Bulldogs. Since this tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, no other team had held five successive opponents under 60. You couldn’t solve the Dawgs’ defense. You tried to survive it. Duke’s defense proved to be similarly impenetrable. This was old-school, possession-by-possession, hard-nosed basketball. And Duke could play that way better than anyone. Coach Mike Krzyzewski hadn’t come this far to be denied a fourth national championship, second only to the 10 by UCLA coach John Wooden. Duke forward Kyle Singler, toward the end of a 19-point night, uncharacteristically was cal