Butler finds itself in familiar role in Sweet Sixteen matchup against Florida Gators

INDIANAPOLIS – Butler guard A.J. Graves thinks Florida has the perfect combination to win another championship, and coach Todd Lickliter is still trying to find a weakness his team can exploit.\nYet as lopsided as Friday night’s regional semifinal game may appear on paper, the Bulldogs believe they can shock the college basketball world by dethroning the defending national champs.\n“They’ve lost this year, so that means somebody has beaten them,” said senior forward Brian Ligon, who grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla. “I don’t think you can go into a game thinking you’re going to lose. That’s not the right way to prepare.”\nButler (29-6) could care less about conventional wisdom, which suggests the Gators are too big, too deep, too athletic and too experienced to succumb to the Bulldogs’ blue-collar tactics.\nPlayers have heard those complaints all season – and throughout their college careers – and have routinely proven the critics wrong, perhaps because their team photo looks like something straight out of the movie “Hoosiers.”\nNo active player stands taller than 6-foot-7, and they have a wispy-looking guard in Graves, who is generously listed at 6-1 and 155 pounds. Even the short haircuts look circa the 1950s.\nSo stopping players like Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Taurean Green will be a daunting challenge.\n“They’re the defending champs, the overall No. 1 seed, the SEC champions,” Lickliter said. “You know, I could keep on going, but I’m already losing sleep now.”\nThen again, Butler has overcome its shortcomings all season.\nCritics continually expected the Bulldogs to get run over by bigger-name opponents, but Butler kept winning. They were more disciplined than Notre Dame and IU, played better defense than Tennessee and out-shot Gonzaga to complete an improbable run to the NIT Season Tip-Off title.\nLast week, Butler did it again.\nWith prognosticators calling the Bulldogs ripe for an upset against 12th-seeded Old Dominion, Butler finally pulled away late before defying the odds again by wearing down Maryland’s superior athletes to reach the round of 16.\nNow comes Florida.\nThe Gators (31-5) are trying to become the first team to win back-to-back national titles since Duke in 1991 and 1992, and have the same starting five that started last year’s championship game. They’re deep, fast and experienced enough to take advantage of the versatile Noah and the powerful Horford – major problems for Ligon and senior forward Brandon Crone.\nBut this is familiar territory for Butler.\nIt’s back in the more familiar role of prohibitive underdog, and Crone insists the Bulldogs will not be intimidated by the Gators’ successes.\n“We have to play our game, which is something we’ve been really good at all year,” Crone said. “We may not hit our shots or may have too many turnovers sometimes, but pretty much all year, we’ve played our game and that’s what we’ve got to do Friday.”\nWhat Butler does best is play precision basketball.\nIt commits the nation’s fewest turnovers (9.5), ranks seventh nationally in free-throw shooting (75.9 percent), fifth in scoring defense (56.9) and 17th in 3-pointers per game (9.0).