INDIANAPOLIS – The memories are coming at him now, striking him in soft and vulnerable spots, and LaVall Jordan is no longer seeing the empty walls of his office at Butler. He’s seeing Jan. 6, 2001.

It’s Tuesday at Hinkle Fieldhouse, but for the Butler basketball coach it’s 2001 at the Nutter Center in Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright State Raiders. LaVall Jordan is a senior. It’s a Saturday night.

“I can see it right now. I can still see my hand on the ball,” Jordan is telling me in his office, straightening out his right arm and cupping his hand as a 6-6 Wright State forward named Kevin Melson rises 16½ years ago for the game-winning jumper.

Melson has driven the baseline in the final seconds. Jordan is tracking Melson, rising with him and smothering the shot before it can happen. But he’s still stinging from a foul called on him minutes earlier, denying what he thought was a clean steal, and now Jordan pulls his hand off the ball. In his office at Hinkle, his arm drops to his side.

“I wanted to avoid the foul,” Jordan says, smiling sadly, “and Melson does this.”

Now Jordan is replaying the way Melson hangs in the air and readjusts the shot. Butler leads 61-60 but Melson is letting it go from 12 feet. Bucket. Ballgame.

It’s quiet now in LaVall Jordan’s uncluttered office, not much in the way of decorations beyond framed jerseys of Butler greats Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack leaning against a wall. It has been just five weeks since Jordan replaced Chris Holtmann, and since then he has been meeting current players and recruiting future ones and selling a house in Milwaukee and buying one in Fishers. For a week the Bulldogs have been practicing, preparing for their four-game, 10-day trip to Spain. They leave in less than two weeks.

The walls can wait.

Now he’s back with me in his office, back from Wright State and 2001, explaining where he just went — and why.

“Letting my guys down,” Jordan says of that 62-61 loss in 2001. “You don’t forget those.”

Winners tend to remember the losses. LaVall Jordan, 38, graduated as the winningest player in Butler history and now has his dream job, coaching his alma mater. By any measure, he is one of the biggest winners this program has ever produced.

And he remembers the losses.

March 17, 2000

In the locker room afterward, he couldn’t get up. Couldn’t shower, couldn’t eat, couldn’t stand. LaVall Jordan cried with his head down, avoiding eye contact with everyone, especially seniors Mike Marshall and Andrew Graves.

It was March, Butler playing Florida in the NCAA tournament, and it was madness. One day earlier Jordan had buried the woman who raised him in Albion, Mich., his great-aunt Jetha Jeffers, and had flown to Winston-Salem, N.C., late that Thursday night to rejoin his team. The game was Friday, and as it happens, Jordan missed the game-winning shot in regulation and then two free throws in the final seconds of overtime, allowing Florida’s Mike Miller to beat Butler at the buzzer.

“Worst week of my life,” Jordan is saying Tuesday.

Nobody was blaming Jordan for that 69-68 loss for Florida. Even for Butler this was a uniquely unselfish team, with Jordan averaging a team-best 11.7 ppg — the only player in double figures — in a season where nobody led Butler in scoring two games in a row. The bus was warming up outside, but freshman Joel Cornette, already showing signs of the leadership genius that would mark his too-short life, waited for Jordan. They walked out of Lawrence Joel Coliseum together.

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Before that, Marshall had stood in the locker room and challenged Jordan and 6-11 center Scott Robisch, the only two seniors the following season.

“Your job,” Marshall told them, “is to leave this program in a better place than you found it.”

Jordan returned to campus to a pile of mail from supportive Butler fans, even fans of other schools. The letters kept coming — “It was amazing,” he says — but soon came another jolt. Jordan, as a member of an NCAA student-athlete leadership panel, was given tickets to the 2001 Final Four in Indianapolis. He watched the first game, Michigan State against Wisconsin, but not the second.

North Carolina was playing Florida.

“I couldn’t take it,” he says. “Florida’s in the Final Four? That’s hard to swallow. I left, and told myself: I’m never coming back to the Final Four unless I’m playing in it.”

That summer Jordan punished himself. Not out of penance, but promise: He was going to leave Butler in a better position than he found it.

“Everybody was fully committed that offseason, everybody in the program — everybody,” Jordan says. “Didn’t matter who we were going to play. We’re getting back to the (NCAA) tournament, and we’re gonna beat somebody.”

Jordan awoke that summer at 5:30 a.m. to run 3-4 miles. He was in the weight room next, sometimes with Robisch, sometimes alone. At night it was open gym at Hinkle, and Jordan was taking on some of the best point guards in the country: Arizona’s Jason Gardner (North Central), the reigning national Freshman of the Year; and Notre Dame signee Chris Thomas (Pike), the upcoming national Freshman of the Year.

“'Vall worked his tail off that summer,” says Marshall, a first-year staffer for that 2001 season. “He became a leader on that team.”

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Jordan missed just 11 free throws all season — he was 67-of-78 (85.9 percent), second in the Midwest Collegiate Conference — but opposing fans were brutal.

Florida, they chanted. Florida.

“There was one guy,” Jordan says, digging through his memory bank for details. “He would just wear me out about those free throws. I don’t remember if it was Detroit — no, it was Cleveland State. I remember, because Brandon Miller hits the shot (with 2.7 seconds left) to win it and he looks at the guy. Looks dead at him. He was all over me, all game, until Brandon hits the shot and stares the dude down.”

Butler won the 2001 MCC tournament and LaVall Jordan was MVP, averaging 12.3 ppg and shutting down conference player of the year Rashad Phillips of Detroit in the conference final, holding him to 10 points on 4-of-15 shooting. Jordan’s teammates scooped him up and carried him around the court.

“They knew what it meant to me,” Jordan says.

Butler got back to the NCAA tournament and Butler beat somebody, jumping Wake Forest for a 43-10 halftime lead and cruising 79-63 for its first NCAA tournament win in 39 years. Jordan had, indeed, left Butler in a better place than he found it.

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The loss to Florida still stung, though. For a year he didn’t watch video from the game, but that summer his phone rang. It was Marshall, the senior whose career ended that day in Winston-Salem. Marshall was visiting his parents in Cincinnati, watching TV, when ESPN Classic began showing the 2000 loss to Florida.

“We need to watch this and get it over with,” Marshall told Jordan. “You need to get it out of your system and make it go away.”

They watched it together, separated by two hours of Interstate 74, connected by the telephone, but Marshall had it wrong. LaVall Jordan still hasn’t gotten that loss out of his system. It hasn’t gone away. He can still feel the ball in his hands as he stands at the line with 8.1 seconds left. After his second attempt rims out, he’s back on defense as Florida’s Teddy Dupay drives and passes to Mike Miller on the left wing.

Miller dribbles into the lane and lofts a floater. LaVall Jordan is coming from the side.

“I’m going to block it from behind,” Jordan says, speaking to me from March 17, 2000. “I can swear I’m going to get a piece of the ball.”

But alas. Jordan returns to the present, to his office, to reality.

“For somebody to be a hero,” he says, “somebody else has to miss the shot.”

July 6, 2013

They couldn’t play just one game. The loser wouldn’t allow it. On and on they went, LaVall Jordan and Brandon Miller, going head-to-head after practice that 2000-01 season, a game of one-on-one becoming two, then three, then four …

“B,” Jordan would plead, calling Brandon Miller by his first initial, “we gotta go eat. The cafeteria’s gonna close.”

Nah. Check it up. One more.

They were teammates and they were brothers — remember, Miller’s reaction after beating Cleveland State was to stare down the fan who heckled Jordan — and 12 years later they were pursuing the same dream. That summer Miller was a Bulldogs assistant. Jordan, then 34, was at Michigan. Brad Stevens had just left Butler for the Boston Celtics.

Jordan texted Miller.

I hope one of us gets it.

One would, according to the national media.

“LaVall Jordan,” ESPN.com reported, “has emerged as the front-runner to replace coach Brad Stevens.”

“It is basically his job to lose,” according to CBSSports.com.

Jordan saw those reports, and he wondered. Butler AD Barry Collier is a one-man search firm, and he leaks nothing.

“People were texting me,” Jordan says. “You’re trying to block it out, but it’s hard. It was out there, yeah. It was out there.”

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You know how that story ends. Collier promoted Miller on July 6, 2013, but a year later Miller took a leave of absence and never returned. Holtmann, an assistant, became the interim coach, then permanent.

Up in Ann Arbor, Mich., Jordan searched for the silver lining and found it. Faith, family and friends sustained him, as did this thought: He had survived worse.

“It’s like when you miss the free throws,” he says. “You’re in the moment, you had an opportunity, it doesn’t go your way. That was way more devastating than not getting the Butler job. You just respond and say: What are you going to do now? How do you get better to come back more prepared next time?”

Jordan spoke with Michigan coach John Beilein about becoming a better assistant, ready to run his own program. He spoke with Brad Stevens, who had been just 30 when he convinced an AD — Butler's Barry Collier, in fact — he was ready to run a program. He spoke with Shaka Smart, who was 32 when he made the jump from Florida assistant to VCU coach.

Michigan associate AD Greg Harden had a side job coaching executives about getting ahead in corporate America. Michigan administrator Brian Townsend worked in student-athlete development. Jordan spoke with them, too.

“Utilizing the resources,” he says. “It’s like having a gym: taking advantage of what’s there, what’s provided, so that the next time you get up to the line, you feel confident about it and you don’t flinch.”

Three years later Jordan interviewed at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and he did not flinch. He got the job, a total rebuild after graduation and transfers left the Panthers without their top six scorers from the previous season.

Jordan’s team lost 24 games, but one stands out. It’s Jan. 29 at Oakland. The Panthers are 8-14 but seem to be finding themselves, winners of two straight. Oakland is 16-6, but Milwaukee is about to win this one on the road. The score is tied at 64 when Oakland fouls Milwaukee’s best shooter, senior Cody Wichmann, who has scored 17 points in the second half, and who led the Horizon League in 3-point shooting the previous season at 48.3 percent. With six seconds left, Wichmann goes to the line for three free throws.

He misses all three.

It goes to overtime where Milwaukee loses, starting a nine-game skid. Wichmann is devastated. Jordan goes to his iPhone and finds the YouTube video of his own devastation — March 17, 2000 — and texts it to Wichmann with a message:

This will not define who you are. It happens. I’ve been through it.

Last-seeded Milwaukee rallies in the Horizon League tournament, winning three games to reach the conference finals before bowing out. In the quarterfinals, Wichmann hits a late 3-pointer against Valparaiso and seals the 43-41 win at the foul line.

Three months later, after Chris Holtmann has left Butler for Ohio State, LaVall Jordan interviews with Barry Collier for the job.

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“He was much more advanced than four years ago,” says Collier, who had been tracking Jordan’s progress at Michigan and Milwaukee, and catching up with him every year at the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) convention. “He just had more experience, more presence, and he expressed himself better than I’d ever heard him. He was thoroughly prepared.”

Jordan walked into the meeting with a 30-page notebook, outlining his vision for the Butler job and how he would execute that vision. He never opened the notebook, didn’t need to read from it, but when he left Collier he said: “I want to leave this with you.”

Collier watched him go, and he knew. He shared the notebook with Butler president James Danko.

“So he would have an idea what we would be getting,” Collier says.

And what was Butler getting? What does Butler have for a basketball coach? Someone who has suffered defeat and decided he didn’t like its taste.

“We’re all designed to grow,” Jordan is saying Tuesday from his uncluttered office. “Anything that has life — plants, animals, us as humans — if you’re not growing and getting better, you’re dying. Or dead.”

He is smiling. LaVall Jordan is talking about victory, and he is right here in the moment.

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

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