Nolan Smith and Andre Dawkins may be celebrating another title one year from now. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

INDIANAPOLIS — After all Duke’s photo opportunities had been exhausted, the national championship trophy was placed, oddly, on top of a garbage can in the Blue Devils’ locker room. Reporters surrounded Jon Scheyer and Brian Zoubek, two stars whose careers were officially over; and they were packed around Kyle Singler, a star who may use his Final Four Most Outstanding Player award as a springboard into the first round of the NBA draft. The one Dukie not wearing a jersey sat alone in a back corner of the locker room, smiling, but detached from the scene.

Seth Curry was wearing dress clothes, sitting out the final game of his transfer year after leaving Liberty for Duke last March. Stephen’s gunner of a younger brother (he averaged 20.2 points for the Flames as a freshman and was a key member of the U.S. Under-19 gold-medal team last summer) took his visit to Durham on the day after the Blue Devils suffered a 23-point loss to Villanova in the Sweet 16. “The mood there was pretty somber,” he said. “Their goal is to get to the Final Four every year. I wouldn’t say they were panicking, but the situation wasn’t good.”

Curry spent this season battling in practice with Scheyer and junior guard Nolan Smith — and watched them rebound from that ’09 tourney embarrassment to win Duke’s fourth national title under Coach K, and first since 2002. Now it’ll be Curry’s turn to chase a title of his own, as he joins a backcourt so loaded — with Smith, incoming five-star point guard Kyrie Irving, and sophomore-to-be shooting guard Andre Dawkins — that it makes the Blue Devils an easy pick as SI’s way-too-early preseason No. 1 for 2010-11.

Smith, despite having a stellar NCAA tournament, gave no serious thought to testing the NBA draft. He didn’t want to miss out on what comes next in Durham. “This squad coming in could be something special,” he said. “Back-to-back championships could be in our future.”

The lineup of challengers for the ’10-11 national title looks like this:

(For the sake of more realistic rankings, I’m assuming that Baylor’s Ekpe Udoh; Georgetown’s Greg Monroe; Georgia Tech’s Derrick Favors; Kansas’ Cole Aldrich and Xavier Henry; Kentucky’s Eric Bledsoe, DeMarcus Cousins, Daniel Orton and John Wall; North Carolina’s Ed Davis; Ohio State’s Evan Turner; Oklahoma State’s James Anderson; Syracuse’s Wes Johnson; West Virginia’s Devin Ebanks and Xavier’s Jordan Crawford all turn pro. And I’m not making any assumptions about unsigned recruits, such as Brandon Knight or Josh Selby.)

1. DUKE: The Blue Devils are here for the backcourt-related reasons stated above, and the breakout year I expect from sophomore Mason Plumlee, who missed time this season with a broken wrist.

2. MICHIGAN STATE: Point forward Draymond Green and shooting guard Durrell Summers are on the verge of becom­ing national stars.  The Spartans will bring in  five-star freshman 6-foot-10 center Adreian Payne.

3. BUTLER:  The Bulldogs lose stopper Willie Veasley, but if they can keep coach Brad Stevens (who’ll surely receive big-time job offers) and Gordon Hayward (who’s considering the NBA draft), they’ll be called a powerhouse, not a mid-major.

4. KANSAS STATE: The Beard is back: Jacob Pullen will be the marquee guard in the Big 12. He and the Wildcats’ glass-crashers — Curtis Kelly, Wally Judge and Jamar Samuels, as well as 6-11 juco transfer Freddy Asprilla — will keep the Octagon rocking.

5. PURDUE: The Boilermakers lose Keaton Grant and Chris Kramer, but a healed Robbie Hummel (torn ACL), along with 6-10 JaJuan Johnson and guards E’Twaun Moore and Lewis Jackson, could help Purdue finally break through to the Final Four.

6. VILLANOVA: Sophomore point guard Maalik Wayns is primed for breakout stardom in Scottie Reynolds’ absence, and center Mouphtaou Yarou, who missed part of his freshman year due to hepatitis B, should make huge gains in his first full season.

7. PITTSBURGH: The Panthers were Big East contenders a year ahead of schedule, tying for second in the league. Junior guard Ashton Gibbs is one of the nation’s most underrated scorers — he shot 44.4 percent on threes during Big East play in ’09-10 — and on the verge of becoming a national name.

8. OHIO STATE: The Buckeyes are sure to lose Evan Turner, but they’re bringing in Rivals.com’s No. 2-rated recruiting class, which includes homegrown center Jared Sullinger and power forward Deshaun Thomas, to join senior wings David Lighty and Jon Diebler, as well as William Buford.

9. BRIGHAM YOUNG: If shooting guard Jimmer Fredette rejoins Michael Loyd Jr. in the backcourt after testing the NBA draft waters, BYU will be the best team west of the Rockies for the second straight season, and a sleeper pick for the Final Four.

10. TEMPLE: With Maryland’s Greivis Vasquez (Venezuela) out of the picture, Owls star Juan Fernandez is the best South American in college hoops. But will he continue to score as efficiently (12.6 ppg. 45.3 percent on threes) after moving from shooting guard to the point as a junior?

The Next 15:

11. KANSAS
12. BAYLOR
13. NORTH CAROLINA
14. OLD DOMINION
15. WISCONSIN
16. GEORGETOWN
17. FLORIDA
18. VANDERBILT
19. SYRACUSE
20. GONZAGA
21. MISSOURI
22. XAVIER
23. WASHINGTON
24. MEMPHIS
25. MURRAY STATE

Gordon Hayward's last shot kept more than 70,000 fans at Lucas Oil Stadium in suspense. (John Biever/SI)

INDIANAPOLIS — The interior walls of Lucas Oil Stadium are made of concrete so thick that when you stand in the back tunnels, you can barely hear the noise from the basketball court. Outside Butler’s locker room in the wee hours of the morning after the national championship game, the sounds from the floor were distant and muddled. Coach K was on a microphone on some unseen stage, speaking about a “great basketball game.” About how he wanted to congratulate both teams. It was difficult to make out the rest. In response to K’s lines, the Duke crowd would roar, just loud enough for those cheers to creep down the tunnel, and sting.

To get to that tunnel, to wait for the Bulldogs to emerge and try to explain the heartbreak of a one-possession, one-missed-shot, 61-59 loss in one of the greatest NCAA championship games ever, you had to pass rows of devastated Butler students. One of them leaned on the railing, suspended in disbelief, as if Gordon Hayward’s half-court heave were being re-enacted, on loop, rather than the real scene that was unfolding: Duke players hugging, rejoicing, wearing flat-brimmed championship hats. “That shot almost went in, didn’t it,” he said. “He really almost did it.”

Another Butler student stood in the back of that section, frozen, defiantly making a No. 1 sign, pointing toward Lucas Oil’s roof. He was clinging to an alternate reality, one in which Hayward’s aim was true, and what might’ve been the greatest buzzer-beater of all-time didn’t hit backboard, front rim, and then floor. Michael Kaltenmark, the man in charge of parading around Butler Blue II, the school’s English Bulldog mascot, waited outside the locker room, too. He had been told to lead Blue II up near the bench in case Butler pulled off a comeback; CBS had requested that the dog be at center-court during the celebration. “It didn’t happen,” Kaltenmark said, “so I had to pick [Blue II] up and rush him out. I tried to get a response out of him, but he was stone cold.” The tension in the room as the Hayward’s prayer hung in the air had been so palpable, so unlike anything we’d ever experienced on a final shot, that even a canine could feel its painful release.

Soon, three Butler players emerged — Hayward, Shelvin Mack and Avery Jukes — and tried to keep their composure as they boarded golf carts for their press conference. Coach Brad Stevens did his obligatory loser’s-locker-room interview with CBS, and said of his players, “What they’ve done together will last a lot longer than one night.”

Butler — America’s team, the underdog, David, Cinderella, Hoosiers, whatever you prefer — did not win, for the first time in 26 games, the first time since Dec. 22. Duke won the national title not because of referees, or luck, or some cruel decree of the basketball Gods. The Blue Devils won because they were the nation’s best team this season, and the only team in this dance to break the 60-point barrier against the Bulldogs’ D. They won because Kyle Singler battled against Willie Veasley’s defense for 19 points, and Brian Zoubek grabbed six offensive rebounds, and Jon Scheyer dished out five assists and only turned the ball over twice while being dogged by the indefatigable Ronald Nored. Those who pulled for Butler should begrudgingly admit that Duke was good, and a deserving champ.

But those who went on this ride with the Bulldogs, through San Jose and Salt Lake, and back home to the warm embrace of Indianapolis, should take solace in the fact that Stevens is right: What they did here will transcend the evening. Butler’s story, even without the fairy-tale ending, will have the more lasting impact from this NCAA tournament. There are 347 teams in Division I, and most of them are incapable of feeling a kinship with the Empire in Durham. They will never have Duke’s money (the nation’s biggest hoops budget, at $13,873,859), Duke’s Olympic team coach, Duke’s McDonald’s All-Americans. What those teams can do is draw inspiration from Butler, a mid-major with 13 home-state kids on its roster, only one of them a ranked recruit; a budget one-eighth the size of Duke’s; and a 33-year-old coach who quit a safe corporate marketing job to take a risk on basketball, and had it pay off in a way that he could never have imagined.

“Teams are going to see what we did and know that they have a shot,” Nored said. “They can know that if they play together, and do the right thing, and listen to their coach, they have a great shot at doing something special.”

This tournament was special because of Butler. The Bulldogs did not beat Duke. But they were there, on the last night of the season, going toe-to-toe with Duke, proving that the only difference between them and the Blue Devils was a few inches on the flight path of the game’s final shot. Butler was there because it beat higher-seeded, BCS-conference powers Syracuse, Kansas State and Michigan State in succession, putting on clinics of man-to-man defense, with all five players knowing exactly when to help one another.

Butler is an inspiration to mid-majors everywhere, real-life evidence that it can be done. Whether or not they want to shoot for a Final Four repeat is up to them. It’s up to Hayward, if he wants to stay for another season (he said he’d “look at what the best situation was” for him regarding the NBA draft). It’s up to Stevens, if he wants to spurn a mega-offer from Oregon that will inevitably come this week (he said he’d say “hello” to any athletic directors that came asking, and go from there). If they stay at Hinkle Fieldhouse, The Bulldogs have true powerhouse potential, and the ability to blur the line between big- and small-conference teams like never before.

It’s hard to grasp the big picture though, when your coach stresses living game-to-game, possession-to-possession, moment-to-moment, and the last moment is so tough to stomach. Veasley, a senior, took it hardest, sitting in the corner of the locker room with his head buried in his jersey, sobbing. Near him was a whiteboard that had been wiped nearly clean, so that it showed only faint markings of a giant “20″ — the halftime message that, as they trailed 33-32, only 20 minutes of basketball played the Butler Way stood between them and a national championship. When Veasley finally came up for air, he explained what had been running through his mind. “It just hit me,” he said, “that it was over.”

The end had come without one of those Butler Plays that saved them against Murray State (Hayward’s deflection and dive to ruin the Racers’ final possession), Syracuse (Veasley’s improbable tip-in over the Orange’s trees) and Kansas State (Nored’s key, late steals and layup) and Michigan State (reserve Shawn Vanzant’s offensive rebound and assist to Hayward). Matt Howard scored two point-blank buckets (one at 1:44, the other at 55 seconds) to cut Duke’s lead to one, but nothing more was in the script: Hayward missed a fadeaway, baseline jumper with seven seconds left, and no Bulldog could sky above the 7-foot Zoubek to create a second-chance opportunity. Because the Bulldogs had such supreme confidence in themselves during crunch time, Veasley said, “It almost seems unreal that we lost, because I was so used to us finding ways in moments like that to pull it off.

“I was waiting for that to happen in those final seconds, and it didn’t. That last thing that usually happens just didn’t.”

And so they were left to retreat to the locker room, to console each other while Duke pranced on confetti, and Coach K talked to the crowd. Behind closed doors, in their own huddle, each of Butler’s seniors had a chance to speak. Walk-on Nick Rodgers thanked them for letting him ride their coattails for four years; Jukes said it was amazing to be a part of something bigger than himself, not just on the court, but as a family. When it was Veasley’s turn, he choked up. Rodgers decided to make a joke — he asked Veasley if he needed a towel to cry into, and threw him a warmup jacket — and after some laughter, Veasley found his voice enough to say how thankful he was to have been a part of this run.

In a more serious gesture, Rodgers had given something to Nored prior to the game: an Easter prayer card, on the back of which he’d written, “More than Conquerors.” It was a message from the pastor who’d visited the team for a Sunday sermon, and spoke of a boy battling leukemia who always used the phrase from Romans, Chapter 8: “In all these things we are more than conquerors.” Nored, the sophomore point guard who will be back to lead the Bulldogs’ next Final Four run in 2010-11, left the prayer card sitting in plain view on the top shelf of his locker as he fielded questions about the loss.

The Bulldogs failed to conquer Duke. But they were avengers for all the little teams whose NCAA tournament dreams have fallen short of Monday Night, and trailblazers for all the small schools who’ll make title runs in the future. The Butler Legend is remarkable, even without the miracle that would’ve set Indy afire. “I think in a few weeks, months, or years,” Nored said, “we can look back and say, ‘This was something unbelievable.’”

(Luke Winn/SI)

INDIANAPOLIS — In search of inspiration the day before the national title game, my colleague Andy Staples and I went to Broad Ripple Tavern. Staples was working on a Brad Stevens column, and Stevens had mentioned that the tavern was his regular Wednesday lunch-and-game-planning spot. Staples’ thinking was that if he ordered the exact same lunch as the Butler coach — a chicken Caesar Salad and a water — he’d be in the optimal mental state for writing.

My thinking was that it would be good for blog readers to see where Stevens does his game preparation. And that it would be good for me to eat something, since I got up early to write a Butler-Duke column and then went straight to press conferences without breakfast.

The location of Broad Ripple Tavern, as Staples wrote, is “between a hookah lounge and a shop that specializes in pipes, tobacco and fine writing instruments.” I had pegged the latter establishment as a head shop — Broad Ripple Village seems like the ideal place for a head shop in Indy — but Staples’ investigative work led to the discovery of the fine writing instruments, and a proper description. I also worried that no one would actually be at the tavern, it being Easter Sunday, but this was not the case.

Not only were plenty of people there at 3:45 p.m., the bar was running a $3 pint special on a sign that read, “Cornhole every Thursday and Sunday.” Easter was no exception, and so there were patrons tossing beanbags on dual cornhole courts set up in the back room.

When I asked Kurtis Hahn, one of the bar’s employees, where Stevens’ table of choice was, he pointed to one right next to the cornhole courts, and within a couple of paces of a Golden Tee Live 2010 machine. Both Staples and myself had been expecting a sanctuary that would be conducive to deep basketball thoughts; upon seeing it, I said, “That’s the table? That’s the room?”

I proceeded to shoot a FlipCam video entitled 45 Seconds of Cornhole; the Stevens table is the square one, just to Retro Dwyane Wade’s right*:

45 Seconds of Cornhole

►

(* Retro Dwyane Wade is actually Hahn. Who is not related in any way to Butler’s Zach Hahn.)

Hahn did clarify that Stevens’ table is typically in a less-hectic setting. The coach usually has the room to himself, without any Wolfmother on the stereo, when he’s poring over his scouting data. “Those cornhole boards aren’t out there when [Stevens] comes in,” Hahn said. “If they were, he’d be like, ‘Hey, uh could you guys keep that down? I’ve got Tom Izzo to get ready for here!’”

Stevens did come in last week, and turned down the bar’s offer of a free lunch. He said he didn’t want to break routine. Just like the flying, post-game back-bump, paying for the Caesar salad is a Stevens tradition.

The tavern was packed for the Final Four game against Michigan State — Hahn said the whole place was chanting “defense” on the Spartans’ last possession, when Gordon Hayward blocked Draymond Green’s shot hand — and should be full for the battle with Duke. A whiteboard sign above the bar displays the last five lines from the Butler War Song:

And in the glow of the victory firelight,
Hist’ry cannot deny
To add a page or two
For Butler’s fighting crew
Beneath the Hoosier sky.

Now, we wait to see if Hist’ry is on Butler’s side tonight.

(Luke Winn/SI)