Thad Matta has retired as Butler basketball coach, and the Bulldogs have one call to make – and only one call to make, if Travis Steele says yes. You know Steele: head coach of the Miami (Ohio) RedHawks, the undefeated darling of the 2025-26 college basketball regular season, a 31-1 team that received the MAC’s first at-large NCAA Tournament bid since 1999.
What Steele has done at Miami is, in a word, miraculous.
Butler basketball needs a miracle.
You know where Travis Steele went to college?
That would be Butler, class of 2004, and Steele spent his freshman season as a student-manager for the 2001 Butler basketball team for (wait for it) Thad Matta. After Matta left that spring for Xavier, Steele became a volunteer assistant at Ben Davis High before embarking on a college coaching journey that included stops at Indiana and Xavier before becoming the country’s most coveted mid-major coach this season at age 44.
Now, before you get too excited, you need to understand two things. One, Butler is far too classy to mess with Steele or any coach whose team is still playing in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. Silence from the Butler search, for however long Miami’s March Madness run lasts, doesn’t mean a failure on the part of Butler athletic director Grant Leiendecker. It means class.
Unless it means something else, because here’s the second thing you need to know:
Philosophically, Travis Steele isn’t exactly Butler’s cup of tea. Steele is an acquired taste, intense in that way (some) college basketball coaches can be, most publicly last month at Western Michigan when he pushed over a DJ’s speaker on his way to the locker room at halftime, damaging the speaker and drawing a $2,500 fine from the MAC.
In that way, Butler – home of the Butler Way – is like Indiana. The Hoosiers have had several basketball openings recently but never considered the likes of former Southern Indiana coach Bruce Pearl or Indiana native Scott Drew because they’re a bit too rough around the edges for the Hoosiers.
The college basketball circle is small, and inside it the overwhelming feeling is that the Bulldogs won’t make Steele a top priority in their search. But if Butler is serious about restoring this program, as everyone there always says it is, the Bulldogs should worry less about gentility and more about ferocity. Otherwise Butler would risk making the mistake Indiana made two years ago, passing up a shot at the hottest coach in college basketball, who just so happens to be an alum.
No, not Pearl or Drew. Indiana passed up a shot two years ago at Dusty May, IU class of 2000.
Is Travis Steele as good as May, whose work at FAU and Michigan suggests an all-time savant? Probably not. But Steele’s as close as Butler is going to get. He’s red-hot, right now.
And Thad Matta retired Monday as Butler basketball coach.
More: Miami’s Travis Steele is Indiana born and bred: Danville High, Butler, Ben Davis HS, IU
Thad Matta retirement stuns Butler
Butler didn’t see this coming.
You want a peek behind the scenes? Here’s a peek:
Last month, when Butler was playing UConn, I was taken aback at how old Thad Matta looked. It had been months since I’d seen him, and in that time he seemed to have aged a decade or more. At halftime, in the media room, I ran into a member of the Butler administration – not AD Grant Leiendecker; think higher – and ran this thought past him:
You think Thad will return next year? He looks OLD.
“He’s younger than he looks,” this Butler VIP told me, and it’s true, Matta is only 58. “And his energy level is great.”
Didn’t seem that way that night, as Matta – who has battled back ailments – limped around when he wasn’t just sitting and watching. Matta spent time that night visiting with UConn coach Danny Hurley, and after the game Hurley told reporters inside the Hinkle Fieldhouse interview room:
“I have an idea of what they spent (on the roster),” Hurley said, “and (Matta) should get (expletive) Big East Coach of the Year for what he did with that team in the nonconference before he lost his starting point guard (Jalen Jackson) and now he’s lost his backup point guard (Azavier Robinson).”
Hurley was putting his finger on the fading pulse of Butler basketball: In this unfortunate era of NIL and the transfer portal, Butler doesn’t have the resources to compete with the best programs – which is what Butler says it wants to be.
Insider: Butler basketball coach Thad Matta among Big East’s best, but needs NIL
Given that reality, and Matta’s results these past four years at Butler – 63-69 (39-55 Big East), zero NCAA Tournament appearances – IndyStar Butler insider Akeem Glaspie and I have been asking folks at Hinkle Fieldhouse for weeks about Matta’s future. All of them have said the same thing: Matta wants to return, and Butler wants him to return. We wrote that story Friday.
Something changed over the weekend.
With change comes opportunity. And Butler should take this opportunity to look closely at Indiana, whether that offers a clue for us – or a lesson for the Buldogs.
Both, if we’re all paying attention.
IU missed Dusty May. Will Butler miss Travis Steele?
Go back 24 months. This was March 2024, and the Indiana basketball program was in trouble. It was Mike Woodson’s third season, only his third, but his first without one of the most decorated players in program history, Trayce Jackson-Davis.
With TJD as a junior and senior, becoming a consensus All-American, Woodson had reached the NCAA Tournament in his first two seasons. Without TJD, the Hoosiers slipped to mediocrity in 2024 (19-14, 10-10 in the Big Ten) and the signs were there that it was no fluke under Woodson, then 65.
Meanwhile, Dusty May – a former student-manager for Bob Knight – had turned FAU into the Miami (Ohio) of the 2023 college basketball season. No, FAU was even better. The Owls reached the 2023 Final Four, and returned to the tourney in 2024. It was, in a word, miraculous.
And for 20 years, IU basketball had needed a miracle.
Doyel in 2023: Ex-IU student-manager, Bob Knight pupil Dusty May is coaching’s next big thing
But Indiana was in a bad spot. Woodson was a legendary former IU player who had answered his alma mater’s SOS in 2022 and responded with two NCAA Tourney appearances in his first three seasons. The momentum was getting away from him in 2024, but Indiana had a decision to make:
Are we the kind of school that pushes out Mike Woodson, a beloved alum, after three years?
Indiana decided: No.
So Michigan, coming off an 8-24 season in 2024, hired Dusty May. In his first season Michigan went 27-10 and reached the 2025 Sweet 16. This season the Wolverines achieved their first No. 1 ranking since the Fab Five in 1992-93, and they enter the 2026 NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed.
Back in 2024 Indiana gave Woodson another year, and what we’d seen that season was confirmed in 2025. The school pushed him out last spring, but what’s done was done. And who was gone, was gone.
Dusty May was at Michigan, and he wasn’t leaving after one season.
The Hoosiers hired Darian DeVries, who was willing to leave West Virginia after one season, and we’ve seen the results this season. Now, in fairness, DeVries will have a better shot at the best transfers this offseason, and the IU administration has given him the resources to do it. DeVries could work out.
But it seems fair to say: He’ll never be as good as Dusty May.
Now it’s Butler’s turn. Who do the Bulldogs hire to replace Thad Matta?
And whoever it is, if he’s not the guy at Miami (Ohio), will he ever be as good as Travis Steele?
More: Join the text conversation with sports columnist Gregg Doyel for insights, reader questions and Doyel’s peeks behind the curtain.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: As Thad Matta retires, Butler can’t afford to make same coaching mistake as Indiana
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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