Sports Betting Blog

There were only a couple seconds left on the clock. Lucas Oil Stadium was packed to its last seat. This was the Big Game. Butler’s Gordon Hayward moved quickly to the sideline, made his jump, aimed and shot. Oh, no matter who you cheer for, if you love this sport, you know it was beautiful. The ball arching over the field. All eyes upon the ball’s trajectory as it hit the glass and bounced off the rim. This shot alone could have made this Butler-Duke game the most intense and dramatic game in the NCAA’s modern era. Yet the ball bounced off and it was just as if David’s shot just barely missed Goliath.

You have to give it up for Butler though. Sure enough, Duke deserved to win. But it would have been a much better story had Butler –the little school that dreamed high– win the National Championship. But that’s that, and this Cinderella Story ended up as an epic tale of the strong dominant team that silently and without much media coverage led its way up to win on March Madness.

We were all expecting this to happen. Duke was meant to take it all at the end. But, we weren’t expecting such a tight game. Unless you took the Blue Devils on the MoneyLine, when it comes to wagering, Duke probably just disappointed you. They were a 7 or 8 point favorite, depending on when you placed your wager. So Butler certainly lived to its expectations.

This is Duke’s 4th National Title. On the other hand this is Butlers first shot at a National Championship. Butler is a small 4,200 enrolled student university in Indianapolis on a modest budget, but played like at its very best. No one had this bracket. That’s for sure. I believe that not even Butler fans thought it was going to be this close of a match.  The Butler Bulldogs have not lost a game since December, and Duke had to go into overdrive to keep barely win this match 61-59.

This was an incredible and insanely mad march. All the Big Names were left behind, one by one. Be it Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky, they all failed miserably at one point or another. This seemed like a good tournament to give the dogs a try. Butler seemed very tempting as a 7 point dog. And many players went for it. This might be a good game on the long haul. It might be one to remember for those mid major schools that following Butler’s example could make it farther then they have ever had.