Not just schooling opponents

Regis senior Brandon Butler plans on making an impact after basketball

By: David Vranicar

Posted: 3/14/07

Ask Brandon Butler's coach to talk about a great game that he had recently, and you're more likely to hear about Butler's personality traits than his basketball statistics.

Ask a former teammate about Butler's best assets as a player, and instead of telling you about his quickness or leaping ability, he'll tell you about his work ethic and attitude.

Tell a current teammate that you would like to do an interview about a recent game, and he'll probably redirect your questions to Butler. "This is who you want. You want to talk to the man, right?"

Anyone who saw Butler play during his two seasons at Regis knows that he was an exceptional basketball player. The 6 foot 5 forward led Regis in scoring both years and was twice selected to the All-RMAC second-team. So it's no secret that he could play ball. But what may still be a secret to basketball fans is that Butler the person is actually more impressive than Butler the player.

"Brandon is a fine young man," said Lonnie Porter, Regis' head basketball coach. "I couldn't ask for a better person to coach. He's just a fine person. You aren't going to find anybody with anything bad to say about Brandon. His character is awesome. Everybody likes him."

The only people who may not like Butler are last season's opponents, who Butler torched for 18.7 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. To be honest, his game was not all that enthralling to watch. He hardly ever shot from outside five feet. He wasn't one for dunks or fancy moves, and, if anything, his style could be described as methodical. Nearly all of his buckets came off of bulldozing, stop-me-if-you-can forays into the paint or workman-like offensive putbacks.

But what he lacked in style he made up for with efficiency. His 63.2 field goal percentage was ninth in the nation. And it didn't matter that everyone knew Butler made his living within a one meter radius of the hoop.

He still had the sixth best points per game average in the conference and a team-high 11 double-doubles. His name appeared atop almost every statistical category for the Rangers (that includes three-point percentage; he was one for one).

Butler was Regis' most valuable player in his two seasons here. But it was a long shot that he ever donned Regis blue and gold in the first place.

"Our chances of getting him were very slim," Porter said. "Division I [schools] were recruiting him, but we just kept at it, kept at it. He turned down some of our rivals in the conference and about three Division I [schools]."

Butler was hardly such a hot commodity coming out of John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans. No major schools recruited him, and his basketball options were confined to the junior college ranks.

He ended up in Hutchison, KS at Hutchison Community College. He would log a total of zero minutes as a freshman at Hutchison because the coaching staff red-shirted him. It seems impossible that the same player who led Regis in scoring 15 times this season would have been stuck on the bench. But, according to Butler, he would not be the dominant player he is today without his time - or lack thereof - in Hutchison.

"When I red-shirted it gave me a lot of time to sit back and think about things, and it also gave me an extra year," Butler said. "It was just incentive to work hard. It showed me that I wasn't where I needed to be, so it was just motivation pretty much."

Butler pursued a change of scenery after a year at Hutchison. He contacted coaches at McCook Junior College in McCook, NE, and arranged for a tryout with the team. He made the McCook squad, and right away it was obvious that Butler had evolved as a basketball player during his redshirt season.

He garnered all-conference honors in each of his two season at McCook and led the team to the conference title as a sophomore in 2004-05. That same year he won the Nebraska Community College Athletic Association Player of the Year Award, capping a career that began with him trying out for a roster spot and ended with a conference championship and a slew of scholarship offers from Division I (D-I) and Division II (D-II) schools.

Regis did have a connection to Butler that gave it an edge over the other schools recruiting him. Regis assistant coach Tim Brich used to be an assistant at McCook, a link that would help Regis lure Butler away from such D-I programs as Southern Utah and Charleston Southern and RMAC foes Nebraska-Kearney and Metro State.

Brich and the coaching staff knew Brandon would be a prefect fit for the basketball team. And after his visit to Regis, Butler knew Regis would be a perfect fit for him.

"It just felt like the right choice at the end," explains Butler. "It was just a feeling I had, so I said I would just go from that. So overall it was just the right feeling that Regis was the right place for me."

It was not an easy decision for Butler, turning down D-I programs as well as higher profile D-II schools such as cross-city rival Metro State, which was ranked as high as no. 4 in the nation this season. But the reasons for Butler choosing Regis were never simply about basketball.

"The professors were really friendly. I like that it was kind of small, so if you needed extra help with professors they were there to talk to you. And my coach [at McCook] told me a little bit about coach Porter, that he would stay on you and he would push you. That was a big part of it, too."

Butler knew that Porter would test his resolve before he arrived on campus. But the transfer student would be immediately challenged by something much more daunting: Hurricane Katrina, which hit his hometown of New Orleans the same day that he was to start his first semester at his new school.

48 hours into the school year, and Butler was far more concerned about broken levees than unfinished schoolwork. His city was ravaged, his family displaced to Houston, and here he was, halfway across the country, trying to juggle a new school, a new city, and new friends.

Add to it the biggest natural disaster in American history, and Butler's arrival at Regis was anything but smooth.

"He was raised by his grandmother, and his grandmother lost everything," Porter recalled. "Just imagine that your house is gone, you know. Your house is gone!"

"It was tough," said Butler, searching in vain for words that could describe the ordeal. "It was hard…. I just wanted to know that [my family] was okay, that everyone was fine."

Katrina provided Porter and the basketball team a glimpse into Butler's character. And they could hardly believe how he responded.

"I'm sure it affected him internally," said former teammate and current assistant coach Logan Garvin. "But externally, I never saw him show any emotion, like 'I don't have this' or 'I'm not going to class because this has happened to me.' He kind of took it in stride, which is impressive to me because it's really hard to fathom something like that happening to you. But I just never remember him letting it affect him."

Porter was also struck by how Butler responded to Katrina. "The maturity he handled that with is probably my fondest memory [of Brandon]."

Katrina provided the first indication that Butler was not the everything-revolves-around-sports sort of student athlete. He understands that there is life after basketball, and he is using his time at Regis to prepare for it.

He will graduate in December with a degree in education. And in the not-too-distant future, he will trade the challenge of being surrounded by opposing defenders for a different challenge: a room full of third graders.

He has been teaching third graders periodically throughout the semester at the Berkley Elementary School, and he will use that experience when he takes on his own classes in the future.

Butler draws on his own education when explaining why he wants to be a teacher.

"I knew a lot of teachers in my life that had a positive and a huge effect on me. So I saw the effect they had on me and I wanted to give that back to students, too, because students are a huge part of the world today." He continued, "Once I went and observed [a classroom] and was just around the kids I knew that that was something I wanted to do."

Butler is as decisive about his future as he is about whirling through the lane on the court. He wants to teach. He wants to teach third graders. He wants to teach third graders at a low-income school.

"[Berkley] is a low income school, and that's the kind of school I want to teach at when I do teach, just because a lot of teachers don't want to take those kind of jobs because the pay's not good and they don't want to teach in the low-income schools because of the [test] scores," he said.

"Teachers are reluctant to take those jobs…but I just want to give back to students like that because a lot of teachers influenced me and I was in a low-income school."

And why third graders? "They just keep me energized the whole time I'm there."

Butler plans on staying in Denver to pursue his teaching career, partly because New Orleans is "still trying to get things in order," but also because he has an affinity for the Mile High City. He likes that it is laid back and full of opportunity. And he is also excited about the challenge of teaching classrooms full of Spanish-speaking students.

"Most of the kids are Hispanic, so English is not their first language….You can see them getting frustrated a lot, but I always talk to them and tell them to just stick in there and it will get better. You can see that they're really making progress, and they're trying and they want to learn," he explained. "I think that's the biggest thing; as long as they want to learn then they will learn."

Butler's professors at Regis are duly impressed with the 23 year-old's philanthropic attitude, his desire to help those who need it most. Dr. Joan Armon, assistant professor of Education, has had Brandon in three different classes and is acutely aware of the import he places upon helping others.

"I think he has a real dedication to improving the world in some way," Dr. Armon explains, "and that comes through when he talks about and writes about children…. He really is concerned about students who may not be successful and does what the can to help them be successful in the classroom. He's very enthusiastic, very dedicated."

That dedication enabled Butler to accomplish a lot since his days as a barely-recruited high school senior and never-used redshirt freshman. Five years later, the player that couldn't sniff the court turned himself into one of the best players in the RMAC and an invaluable member of Regis' team. And now, as Butler says good-bye to college hoops, he is set to take on a set of challenges that makes basketball look easy.

But with what Butler has achieved already, it's tough to think of a reason why his success won't continue.