![\"butler\"](\"http:\/\/s.wsj.net\/public\/resources\/images\/OB-IA388_butler_E_20100402135349.jpg\")
It’s not every season that a long-shot team like the Butler University Bulldogs makes it to the championship round of the NCAA basketball tournament. And it’s certainly not every year that the coach of a Final Four team used to sell prescription drugs.<\/p>\n
Between college and the start of his coaching career, Brad Stevens, the 31-year-old coach of the Bulldogs<\/a>, did a short stint as a marketing associate at Eli Lilly working from Lilly’s HQ in Indianapolis. He left the drug maker in 2000 to join the staff at Butler, also in town.<\/p>\n Stevens is now in his third year as the Bulldogs’ coach, and is leading the team into the championship weekend that starts tomorrow in — as luck would have it — Indianapolis. That’s generated huge home-town support for Butler, including a big turnout at a Bulldog practice session held today at Lucas Oil Stadium (see picture).<\/p>\n The team’s surprising success also has stirred up supporters at nearby Lilly. Spokesman Ed Sagebiel tells the blog that the company has raised Butler University flags around the headquarters’ main entrance. At night, the company has been bathing its 12-story corporate tower in lights that are Butler blue.<\/p>\n No word if the company’s animal-health division is providing any assistance to Butler Blue II<\/a>, the university’s bulldog mascot.<\/p>\n Bonus trivia<\/strong>: One of Stevens’ predecessors at Butler, coach Tony Hinkle, came up with the idea of coloring basketballs orange — to make them easier for players to see, the university proudly proclaims in advertising.<\/p>\n Photo: Ed Sagebiel<\/em><\/p>\n It’s not every season that a long-shot team like the Butler University Bulldogs makes it to the championship round of the NCAA basketball tournament. And it’s certainly not every year that the coach of a Final Four team used to sell prescription drugs. Between college and the start of his coaching career, Brad Stevens, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5782,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5782"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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