Butler in familiar role against Florida

Butler guard A.J. Graves thinks Florida has the perfect combination to win another championship, and coach Todd Lickliter is still trying to find a weakness his team can exploit.

Yet, as lopsided as Friday night's regional semifinal game may appear, the Bulldogs believe they can dethrone the defending national champs.

"They've lost this year, so that means somebody has beaten them," said senior forward Brian Ligon, who grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla. "I don't think you can go into a game thinking you're going to lose. That's not the right way to prepare."

Butler (29-6) couldn't care less about conventional wisdom, which suggests the Gators are too big, too deep, too athletic and too experienced to succumb to the Bulldogs' blue-collar tactics.

Players have heard those complaints all season _ and throughout their college careers _ and have routinely proven the critics wrong, perhaps because their team photo looks like something straight out of the movie "Hoosiers."

No active player stands taller than 6-foot-7, and they have a wispy-looking guard in Graves, who is generously listed at 6-1 and 155 pounds. Even the short haircuts look like circa 1950s.

So stopping players like Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Taurean Green will be a daunting challenge.

"They're the defending champs, the overall No. 1 seed, the SEC champions," Lickliter said. "You know, I could keep on going, but I'm already losing sleep now."

Then again, Butler has overcome its shortcomings all season.

Critics continually expected the Bulldogs to get run over by bigger-name opponents, but Butler kept winning. They were more disciplined than Notre Dame and Indiana, played better defense than Tennessee and outshot Gonzaga to complete an improbable run to the NIT Season Tip-Off title.

Last week, Butler did it again.

With prognosticators calling the Bulldogs ripe for an upset against 12th-seeded Old Dominion, Butler finally pulled away late before defying the odds again by wearing down Maryland's superior athletes to reach the round of 16.

Now comes Florida.

The Gators (31-5) are trying to become the first team to win back-to-back national titles since Duke in 1991 and '92, and have the same starting five that started last year's championship game. They're deep, fast and experienced enough to take advantage of the versatile Noah and the powerful Horford _ major problems for Ligon and senior forward Brandon Crone.

But this is familiar territory for Butler.

It's back in the more familiar role of prohibitive underdog, and Crone insists the Bulldogs will not be intimidated by the Gators' successes.

"We have to play our game, which is something we've been really good at all year," Crone said. "We may not hit our shots or may have too many turnovers sometimes, but pretty much all year, we've played our game and that's what we've got to do Friday."

What Butler does best is play precision basketball.

It commits the nation's fewest turnovers (9.5), ranks seventh nationally in free-throw shooting (75.9 percent), fifth in scoring defense (56.9) and 17th in 3-pointers per game (9.0).

The combination has been good enough to produce five wins over power-conference teams and eight straight wins on neutral courts this season.

And Butler is hoping St. Louis, about a three-hour drive from Indianapolis, will be a friendlier environment than Albany, N.Y., was four years ago during their last trip to the regional semifinals. Butler sold its entire allotment of tickets Monday.

Yet Graves and his teammates know it will take more than fans to pull the upset of the tournament. The fifth-seeded Bulldogs will need their best game of the season.

"Florida is a very good basketball team and if I had to describe them, I'd say they're almost perfect at every position," Graves said. "I think what's great about this team is that it doesn't look at this game that way. We're going to go play what everyone's calling the best team in nation and we're going to play Butler basketball."