Butler's small-town Howard: Big fan club

HOUSTON -- Postman Stan Howard, his wife, Linda, and 15 other members of the Howard family, including grandchildren, were at Reliant Stadium Monday night to cheer on forward Matt Howard and his Butler teammates. It was a costly trip the Howards couldn't afford, but people from Connersville, Ind. (pop. 13,481) held a fundraising drive to send them all to see the NCAA men's basketball championship game against Connecticut.

Such is the relationship between Matt Howard, his hometown and the love for basketball that binds them all together. To say Connersville has been living vicariously through the Bulldogs' star the past couple of years as Butler made two improbable runs to the national title game is an understatement. If Butler's story has been a little slice of Americana, then Howard is the freckle-faced personification of the Butler Way, the creed by which everyone in the program lives.

Howard is the eighth of 10 children who grew up in Connersville, about an hour outside of Indianapolis. Asked to describe what people there do for excitement, Howard said, "There isn't a whole lot to do. You have quite a few good friends and just hang out with them.

"Really, the hottest thing is the sports seasons, especially the basketball team. People really come out for basketball. It's a big deal. In other places, people are very surprised when you have 5,000 people for a basketball game. There were numerous times in my high school career when there were that many people there. That tells you what Indiana basketball means, especially in a small town."

The word "quirky" has been used to describe the 6-8 Howard. And he is, if you consider it quirky to ride an old bike around campus, not worry if your socks don't match, never appear to run a comb through your hair and carry a 3.77 GPA as easily as he carries a 16.7 scoring and 7.8 rebounding average.

"It's just who I am," Howard said before taking on UConn a year after Butler just missed knocking off Duke in the title game. "It's been great for me to have grown up in a big family. You learn how to value certain things. My brothers and sisters and parents are unbelievable with the support they've given me.

"In my mind, there's a lot of things that don't matter so much, and maybe that's why I don't care what my socks are like, what I wear or what my hair looks like. If I cut my hair, styled it, I wouldn't look a whole lot better."

As good a player as Howard was in high school, Connersville never got out of the first stage of the Indiana state basketball tournament, known as the Sectionals. That was a huge disappointment, Howard said, "just because of how big the sport was there. We had some really good teams, but there were a few games where it seemed we had one or two of them and they sort of slipped away.

"It was really hard to deal with. You play to win championships and those games, and to be so close and not get there was frustrating."

But last season, Howard and the Bulldogs took Connersville and the rest of Indiana to within one missed basket at the buzzer of a national title before losing to Duke, 61-59. Certainly, there was no expectation of a return trip to the championship game, so to show Howard how much he means to them, about 1,400 people from Connersville attended his Senior Night game at Butler.

"From a town of about 12,000, that's pretty incredible. That meant so much to me. There were a lot of people I care about there and a lot of people who care about me," said Howard, whose putback at the buzzer in the first round beat Old Dominion and started another brilliant tournament ride by Butler.

"It's a special relationship I've been able to build with them."