Doyel: This is March, and this is how Butler wins

MILWAUKEE – Kamar Baldwin didn’t score much. Seven points, that’s all. There’s a way to get ESPN’s attention, and that’s not it.

All Kamar Baldwin did was help win this game.

Tyler Lewis didn’t score much, either. Nine points. Not bad, two more than Baldwin, but nothing that jumps off the stat sheet.

Tyler Lewis helped win the game, too.

That’s the beauty of this Butler basketball team. It has a million ways to win, all of them unselfish, and we saw two of them on Thursday in the fourth-seeded Bulldogs’ 76-64 victory against No. 13 Winthrop in their NCAA tournament opener.

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Truth is, we saw more than two ways. We saw Memphis transfer Avery Woodson play in his first career NCAA tournament game and decide he’d like to stay a while, scoring all 18 of his points on 3-pointers, 15 in the first 16 minutes. We saw Tyler Wideman and Nate Fowler put a clamp on the rim. We saw Kelan Martin do what he has done since Butler’s leading scorer was removed last month from the starting lineup: Not worry about whether his shot is falling — it wasn’t on Thursday; he was 3-for-8 from the floor — but defend and rebound (he had eight Thursday).

We saw Andrew Chrabascz do what he does, a little bit of everything, 12 points and four rebounds and three assists. League coaches voted Chrabascz onto the All-Big East first team because they get it: The whole of Chrabascz’s game is greater than the sum of its parts.

He is a microcosm of Butler.

"Forty-five," said Winthrop star guard Keon Johnson, referring to Chrabascz’s jersey number. "Great player."

Indeed. But on Thursday, Butler’s two most influential players against Winthrop combined for 16 points. Kamar Baldwin wasn’t invited to the postgame news conference, a nationally televised reward given to the biggest stars of the game. Baldwin scored seven points. Missed four of his seven shots from the floor. He wasn’t sitting at the podium.

I found Baldwin in the Butler locker room, sitting alone in the corner, ignored despite singlehandedly wrecking the Winthrop offense. The Eagles are a single-engine operation, going as far as the 5-7 Johnson can take them, and Baldwin lifted the hood and poured sand on the whole thing.

Johnson, who came into the game 10th in the NCAA in scoring at 22.5 ppg, was dismantled by Baldwin. He finished with 17 points but needed 19 shots, going 7-for-19 overall and 3-for-10 on 3-pointers. Johnson came into the game ranked 23rd in the country in free throws made — that’s 23rd out of about 5,000 players — but against Butler he made zero free throws.

Against Butler he attempted zero free throws.

Johnson couldn’t get to the rim against Baldwin. He couldn’t get anywhere against Baldwin. He did shoot multiple air balls. He did fall down under duress for a turnover. He didn’t have a chance, not against a 6-0 Butler freshman with quick feet and a 6-6 wingspan.

“Just tried to make him work for everything he got,” said Baldwin.

Out in the hall, Keon Johnson was walking past the Butler locker room as I left. So I walked him to the Winthrop locker room, asking him about Baldwin. Johnson was nodding his head. He’d given Baldwin all the respect in the world after the game, bringing the handshake line to a standstill to give Baldwin a hug, and now he was about to give him a little bit more.

“He did a great job on me,” Johnson said. “Quick, long. He’s a great defender.”

Baldwin didn’t do it alone. He played 34 minutes and spent every one of them on Johnson, but when Baldwin left the game, Kethan Savage inherited Johnson and made the Winthrop star struggle some more.

As for Baldwin, I pointed out the stat box to him. Showed him his point total: Seven, it said. Asked him how he felt about that, knowing — believe me, I knew — what he would say.

“I didn’t care if I scored a point,” he said. “We’re just trying to win the game. Whatever I can do to help, I’m going to do.”

Which brings me to senior point guard Tyler Lewis.

This guy blew the game open in the second half. After leading by as many as 19 points, the Butler margin was down to single digits when Lewis came into the game with 13:54 to play. Butler was leading 53-43 when he took over.

Lewis drove for a basket at the rim. Drove again and got hit under the rim for a foul, making one of two free throws. Drove again and gave Nate Fowler a nifty no-look pass at the rim for a foul and two more points. Then Lewis attacked the rim in transition for a layup. A 7-0 run, complements of Tyler Lewis. Now Butler led 60-43.

Winthrop was finished, but not Lewis. He threw a 40-foot alley oop to Tyler Wideman, who had blocked a shot and sprinted the floor, beating everyone to the other rim and getting rewarded with a dunk from Lewis.

More Lewis. He fed Chrabascz for a layup in transition, and then found himself behind the Winthrop press and ignored a contested layup for himself by creating an uncontested layup for Savage. Lewis finished the game with eight assists — one off the Butler record for an NCAA tournament game, set in 2003 by Mike Monserez against Louisville — and just one turnover.

“That’s the type player he is,” Savage was telling me in the locker room. “You can see the joy he has, passing the ball. I swear he’d rather get an assist than score the ball.”

Doesn’t matter to these guys who scores. The points all end up on the same side of the scoreboard. The Butler side. The winning side, more often than not. This is March, you know.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel