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    Bush & Butler

    Former President kick starts the Final Four, gives Butler's Matt Howard ahandshake at star-studded Salute

    Chris Baldwin
    Apr 1, 2011 | 1:34 am
    • George Bush sat front and center at the Final Four NCAA Salute.
      Photo by Richard J. Carson
    • Butler forward Matt Howard received a handshake from the former prez.

    For an event to truly reach mega status in Houston, it needs to get George and Barbara Bush involved.

    Well, consider the Final Four Bush blessed.

    Former President George Bush sat in the front row at the Wortham Theater center Thursday night for a star-studded NCAA Salute that brought all four Final Four teams onto the stage together. And no one got closer to the Bushes than Butler's star forward Matt Howard.

    Salute host Jim Nantz urged Howard to go to the edge of the stage and shake both Bushes' hands. The occasion for the moment? Nantz had noted that Howard is the winner of the Elite 88 Award for the second straight year. An Elite 88 award is given out to the student-athlete participating in the Final Four with the highest cumulative grade-point average.

    Howard's been the high grade man for two Final Fours running now.

    But Butler and Howard's moment wasn't done there. The Bulldogs forward was also the last player shown in a "One Shining Moment" preview video montage that closed the Salute.

    A Butler omen for Monday night? After all, Howard's already won two games for the Bulldogs this NCAA Tournament with last-second plays.

    One thing's certain. It was enough to leave everyone who walked across the hall to Nantz's Live at the Final Four Dinner buzzing. Several people who attended both events marveled to CultureMap about the electric scene that the moment between the Bushes and Howard brought to the Wortham.

    Nantz certainly concurred.

    "Only Houston could do a night like this," Nantz said, as everyone slowly settled into their seats at his post-Salute dinner which benefited the Nantz National Alzheimer's Center at Methodist Hospital. Nantz started these Salutes in the 1990s, but the early ones didn't include any players. Until the 2006 Final Four in San Antonio, when Nantz convinced UConn coach Jim Calhoun to commit his team to the idea, which caused the other squads to follow by attending every year after. (UConn ended up winning the Final Four that year and Calhoun and Huskies were back on the stage in Houston).

    But this time, the Final Four kick starter was highly personal for Nantz. And not just because it was in the town where Nantz spent a large chunk of his childhood and his college days (at the University of Houston). One of the forces behind Nantz's drive on this night was honoring 89-year-old iconic UH basketball coach Guy V. Lewis, the underappreciated architect of five Final Four teams and Phi Slama Jama phenomenon.

    Lewis was brought out onto the stage in his wheelchair to receive standing ovations at both the NCAA Salute and the Final Four dinner. Elvin Hayes — the former Cougar who is one of the greatest players in NBA history — helped do the honors of pushing Lewis out in front of the audience at the Wortham.

    It was a presidential kind of Shining Moment.

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    Beyond the Boxscore

    Houston in line to get more Final Fours after 2016: NCAA officials expect it tobecome a regular

    Chris Baldwin
    Apr 5, 2011 | 7:07 pm
    • The success of Bracket Town meant almost as much to the NCAA as the success atReliant Stadium.
      Photo by Bruce Bennett
    • NCAA official Greg Shaheen praised Houston's Final Four efforts.
    • Kemba Walker wasn't the only one who flew high at this Final Four.
      Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

    When even NCAA officials are making jokes about the lowest-scoring NCAA Championship Game since 1949, you know they had a good time in Houston.

    That's what happens in the Final Four wrap-up press conference Tuesday. Greg Shaheen — the highest-ranking NCAA official in the room — opens his portion with a crack about the offensive woes Monday night.

    Shaheen notes that if more people had the motor shown by Houston Final Four Local Organizing Committee interim executive director Doug Hall then "we might have had a game last night where both teams scored 60 points."

    "You were on overdrive," Shaheen says to Hall.

    Yes, there is a whole lot of love in the room when the Houston LOC and the NCAA meet for the last time before this 2011 Final Four becomes part of the record books — and thoughts begin to slowly turn to the 2016 Final Four that will be held in Houston and the 2015 regional at Reliant Stadium before that.

    It does not figure to end in 2016 though. Shaheen — the NCAA's interim executive vice president of championships and alliances — tells CutureMap he expects there will be even more Final Fours in Houston in the future.

    "I don't see any reason why Houston wouldn't become a regular part of our rotation," Shaheen says.

    Shaheen would be the first to say that the NCAA's Basketball Committee will make the final call like usual on future sites, but he says the committee is thrilled with Houston's performance.

    "This is what a showcase event should look like," Shaheen says of a Houston event that set the Final Four record for total attendance (145,747 at the two nights of games) and also drew an estimated 140,000 to the Big Dance Concert Series (the concert figure is based on an "approximation" of the number of people who came through Discovery Green during all three concerts that lasted several hours each) and another 49,000 to Bracket Town at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "This is what a national championship should feel like.

    "It should be exhausting the next morning and be a seamless effort."

    Later Shaheen quips, "UConn is not the only winner here."

    Instead, Texas might be the biggest winner of all. For the Lone Star State has emerged as the NCAA's big event darling. Texas will host three Final Fours in a six-year stretch (Houston in 2011 and 2016, Dallas in 2014). And that type of dominance is not expected to end anytime soon either.

    "In the modern era, for both the men's and women's championships, I don't know that any state has emerged like Texas," Shaheen says. "And I think you have to include San Antonio (host of the 1998, 2004 and 2008 Final Fours) in that equation as well. There are a lot of things Texas offers the championships that are unique."

    Standing off to the side in the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency — which served as the headquarters for the coaches convention during Final Four week, housing all the big names who weren't coaching in the games — Robert Dale Morgan is sure of what makes Houston such a lure.

    Morgan, the president and executive director of the 2011 Houston Final Four LOC, held a similar position for Houston's 2004 Super Bowl and many credit his vision with helping the city see its big sports event potential, with a Super Bowl, Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Game, Major League Soccer All-Star Game and now a Final Four all having been held here since 2004. Not that Morgan wants that recognition.

    He chooses to sit in the crowd rather than on the stage at the wrap-up press conference. He probably could have blended in to, wearing a Houston Final Four hat with his suit, if so many people on the stage didn't point him out. Bob Beauchamp, chairman of the Houston Final Four LOC, calls Morgan, "the best in the business."

    "Having six million people who care," Morgan says in explaining how Houston's positioned itself as the host city with the most. "Having a dozen Fortune 500 companies. And oh by the way, we have really great weather 300 days out of the year."

    Trash Talk Between Friends

    Houston hands off the Final Four to New Orleans, next year's host. The transition is a bit of intentional symbolism by the NCAA which wants to recognize how closely the two cities are linked and the Bayou City's role in helping after Hurricane Katrina.

    This will be the fifth Final Four that New Orleans has hosted and the city's LOC executive director John Koerner can't help but point out to Houston, the new city in "the rotation," how great every one of the NCAA Championship Games held in the Big Easy has been.

    "New Orleans has hosted some of the most memorable finals ever," Koerner says. "We had Michael Jordan's shot, Keith Smart's shot, Chris Webber's infamous timeout and Hakim Warrick's block at the buzzer."

    And from its first Final Four, Houston has? Well, a whole lot of clangs — and Butler's record-low 18.8 percent shooting.

    Not that anyone in the NCAA is holding it against the Bayou City. The organization credentialed 1,387 media members for this Final Four, loved the visibility brought about by having it in one of the America's biggest cities. Even if you have to wonder how much everyone was into it locally. The TV rating in Houston for the unsightly Butler-UConn national championship game only ranked 30th out of the 56 major media markets.

    Shaheen's not dwelling on that. Instead, he's sticking around Houston to take in more of the city without the pressures of the mega event.

    "I don't have a flight home," Shaheen says, knowing that Southwest Airlines' grounded jets have made it much harder than usual to land one last minute. "So I'll be staying here two, three, four, five more days. I may be looking to get an apartment and just become a resident."

    Shaheen laughs. Who says NCAA suits don't have a sense of humor?

    When they are happily in Houston, they sure do.

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