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Get inside March Madness with SI.com's Luke Winn in the Tourney Blog, a daily journal of college basketball commentary, on-site reporting and reader-driven discussions.
3/15/2007 08:23:00 PM

Butler Gets Bothered ... But Not By ODU

A.J. Graves
A.J. Graves certainly earned a drink of water after his game against Old Dominion.
AP

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In case you were under the impression that the players in the NCAA's multi-billion-dollar tournament have an overly cushy experience, I bring you this story from the Butler locker room.

About a half hour after the fifth-seeded Bulldogs' 57-46 win over 12th-seeded Old Dominion, I spotted star guard A.J. Graves standing near the door still in full uniform, not looking as jubilant as you'd expect someone to appear after winning a first-round game. Initially I thought he might be disappointed with the postgame spread -- he was glancing over at the bland, boxed sub sandwiches and bottles of Powerade -- but would the third son of a rural Indiana plumber really be that picky?

It turned out that Graves, wasn't critiquing the food; he was just dying of thirst. The NCAA had selected Graves and teammate Brandon Crone for random postgame drug tests, which meant no food and no liquids until after they filled the testers' cups. "How can you tell a guy who just sweated through a whole game he can't have anything to drink?" Graves said.

Graves, an innocent-looking, Jimmy Chitwood-type character, hadn't pulled a Scot Pollard or been caught holding a Josh Heytvelt gym bag -- he was just randomly selected as part of the NCAA's standard tournament screening process for all teams. It was an annoying coincidence, though, that he had already been forced to take a drug test last week. "I'm an actuarial science major," said Graves, a junior. "I needed to take it for a summer job at an insurance company in Indianapolis -- and I already passed that one."

Minutes later, Graves was herded down a tunnel at HSBC Arena to take care of business. I felt bad for him; he looked parched. I examined the box score I was holding, and it said he had played 39 minutes and scored 18 points. More interesting was that, after entering the game as the nation's second-leading free-throw shooter at 95.6 percent, he missed one of his six free throws. Perhaps that raised a red flag.

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Posted: March 16, 2007 11:56 AM   by Anonymous Anonymous
I'm looking forward to Butler vs. Maryland.

Not sure either is in the class with Florida though.
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