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[QUOTE="moqui, post: 182212, member: 214"]
not me . . . despite the three card monty that the SUAD tried to play with Arinze's status, I was certain that he was done for the duration.  I had seen them play three times that year and knew how good they were - tough defensively and efficient on offense.  I actually picked Butler to win in my bracket (I was not so prescient to pick them to the Final Four, though). 
 
If you had watched Butler play that year, then you knew that Arinze would have made a tremendous difference.  Butler played strong man to man defense, but they did not have anyone on their roster who would have been able to match up with Arinze.  While they were able to push Ricky one or two feet off his preferred mark (and that makes a huge difference), I don't think they could have moved Arinze. Remember, this was the Junior Ricky, not the Senior Ricky.  He was pudgy and didn't give nearly as much effort as he did the next year.   JB tried to go to Ricky on the blocks early and often, and kept coming up empty.  Arinze would have gotten buckets or fouled.  Even if he hadn't converted the latter into points, he would have gotten the BU bigs in foul trouble.  BU would have had to double him, which would have taken pressure off of the perimeter and opened up the SU game. 
 
Blue Curtain likes to deride the notion that Arinze made that much of a difference, but he is more wrong on that single point than any other bête noire he likes to pound on.  Anyone who remembers how SU played offense during that season knows better.  Anyone who also paid attention to how Butler had played defense knows even better.
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