In the summer of 2004 when any suggestion of Butler University playing for a national championship might have drawn laughter, an unknown assistant coach made a cost efficient, wide ranging recruiting trip to Florida. He squeezed in one more stop, wandering over to Wharton High School\u2019s gymnasium to watch their workouts.<\/p>\n
Butler head coach, Brad Stevens<\/strong>, checked out Shawn Vanzant<\/strong> and liked what he saw. He saw a defensive-minded, versatile player that fit their system. Vanzant <\/strong>became a recruiting priority.<\/p>\n It may have seemed unusual when Vanzant<\/strong> signed to play at Butler, a 4,200 student, mid-major school. But, the 6-foot guard said it was perfect for him.<\/p>\n After four consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament – and two straight trips to the Final Four – Vanzant<\/strong> will conclude his college career with a chance to win a national championship this weekend at Houston\u2019s Reliant Stadium.<\/p>\n The 8th-seeded Bulldogs (27-9) will meet the 11th seeded Virginia Commonwealth Rams (28-11) in Saturday\u2019s national semi-final contest.<\/p>\n Vanzant<\/strong> averages 8.1 points and 3.2 rebounds, and had his greatest moment in the Horizon League tournament semi-finals. Vanzant<\/strong> scored 18 points in the final 13 minutes of the game as his team defeated Cleveland State 76-68.<\/p>\n In last Saturday\u2019s 74-71 region final victory over the Florida Gators, Vanzant <\/strong>directed a floating pass toward the rim where his teammate, Khyle Marshall<\/strong>, grabbed it and slammed it home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the summer of 2004 when any suggestion of Butler University playing for a national championship might have drawn laughter, an unknown assistant coach made a cost efficient, wide ranging recruiting trip to Florida. He squeezed in one more stop, wandering over to Wharton High School\u2019s gymnasium to watch their workouts. Butler head coach, Brad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}