2012 Maui Invitational Field announced

[jaybilaswho?]

welp... looks like I will be heading to Hawaii. It was just a thought prior to the release. Should be a great tourny.

[Benny B]

Butler is located in Indianapolis, just as urban, in fact more urban than Milwaukee.  So Butler has to deal with IU and Purdue?  MU has to deal with UW.  Any idea about the drastic difference in talent pools between the state of Indiana and Wisconsin??  My guess - Indiana produces 2-3 times as many D-1 basketball players as the state of WI. 

Having lived in Indianapolis and Milwaukee, the award for more "urban" feel of the two definitely goes to Milwaukee.  In any event, Marquette is an urban campus, Butler is not.  Butler has more of a "UWM meets Cardinal Strich" feel to it... in fact, if you didn't know how to get to campus, you'd probably never find Butler, and if you were wandering around aimlessly, you could probably stumble right through campus without even knowing it.

Butler may not be "middle-of-nowhere-Indiana," but it is "middle-of-nowhere-Indianapolis" or "middle-of-nowhere-Horizon-League" at the very least.

Frankly, Butler is a D-III school that has a D-I basketball team who's had some decent success over the years... the one thing it has going for it is its history which has great importance - as Ners implied - when recruiting in Indiana... not so much elsewhere.  Although consecutive championship game appearances will help for a few years, but Brad Stevens still has an upward battle in recruiting because i) the talent pool in Indiana is larger than many states, but the elite players still end up going out of state more often than not, ii) "It's Butler, it's Butler" just doesn't have the same ring for kids looking to stay in state and iii) Butler will always be a tough sell for a prototypical 4 or 5-star looking for exposure.

[MountainCreekHouse]

Born in Indy, lives in Indy, but currently at MU. I've been a huge Butler basketball fan for basically my whole life, and I can't count how many times I've been told "oh Butler is coming out of their prime" ... literally since the late 90s. Time and time again successful coaches leave (Thad Matta, Todd Lickliter) and stud "once in a blue moon" players leave (Darnell Archy, A.J. Graves, Pete Campbell, Gordon Hayward, Matt Howard, the list goes on) and people say Butler's success is on the way down. En yet, they always find ways to be successful. As long as they keep getting recruits from the state of Indiana, I absolutely refuse Butler will never be a threat in the NCAA tournament. It just blows my mind how much better the basketball talent is in Indiana comparatively when you look like states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois which all have larger populations then Indiana.

Even when Stevens goes, the success of Butler basketball is unprecedented. The culture there just knows what players to get and what system to use with those players to be successful. It goes back to something deeper with all major universities in Indiana: IU, Purdue, Indiana St., ND, etc.-- they have all found success in basketball. Varying, granted, but it goes back again to recruiting in Indiana. (Yes, ND does do this for both bball and football)

As for comparatively to MU, I would argue butler has overall been more successful in the last 10 seasons then MU. Indianapolis is a little bit larger than Milwaukee, but like someone else mentioned the fact that Indy has secured a Superbowl, NCAA headquarters, Final Fours out the wazoo, etc. makes it one of the biggest little-cities in the US. A very underrated place to live IMO.