INDIANAPOLIS – Last year, chaos ensued.

You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing cameras click. You couldn’t move without seeing a TV truck or a reporter with a microphone looking for someone to talk about the place – how it really is and what it’s really like.

Wading through the bookstore became impossible. People looking for new gear – those blue ball caps or sweatshirts with big B’s emblazoned on them – jammed themselves so tightly into that small space inside the student union, you could barely breathe.

During the run to the NCAA Final Four last April, all eyes descended upon tiny Butler University, a campus nestled near the North Meridian Street Historic District in Indianapolis.

This week, it’s quieter.

And it’s normal again – despite yet another upset win by the Bulldogs – over No. 1 seed Pittsburgh – last weekend to advance to the NCAA Sweet 16.

A handful of brothers at Tau Kappa Epsilon are blasting Cheap Trick from their porch. The men of Sigma Chi are blaring more classic rock a few houses down. Students are filing out of old Jordan Hall, an 83-year-old building, talking about spring break and where they went – Mexico, Jamaica, home.

Many make their way to Atherton Union, the daytime social hub of the 4,000-plus student body and home of the first Starbucks ever on a college campus.

It’s warm outside for once. Everyone is clad in shorts and T-shirts, tank tops and sundresses, all going with the flow of typical college life.

“Our basketball team put us on the map, but it got somewhat uncomfortable,” says Grace Wirthwein, a sophomore psychology major from Carmel, of the attention the school received last year.

Wirthwein is sitting outside Atherton with her friend and fellow psych major, Jackie Marsh. Their laptops are open, their cellphones out. Class is over for the day, but there are still meetings to attend, homework to do.

Both talk about what seemingly got ignored in the hubbub last year – the school’s stellar academics and the tight-knit community. Sometimes it seems that talk of Butler is only about basketball, and they expect it might happen again now that the Bulldogs are playing tonight against Wisconsin for a chance to go to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.

“It’ll probably start again,” says Marsh, who talked to the press last year, of the media attention. “I don’t know. It hasn’t yet. There haven’t been any reporters – until you.”

‘Butler bubble’

Some facts about Butler, according to its website:

•Founded in 1855, its focus is on liberal arts and professional education.

•U.S. News and World Report called it the No. 1 “Up-and-Coming” Midwest school; its part-time MBA program was ranked 36th in the country by Business Week; its dance program is one of the top five in the country; and its pharmacy school is in the top three in the nation.

•Its fall enrollment included 4,051 undergraduates and 4,640 students total.

That last factoid is what contributes to something students call the “Butler bubble.”

They’re not referring to the indoor facility that serves as home to the men’s and women’s tennis teams and happens to go by the same name. They’re referring to the fact that Butler is so small, you can find yourself disconnected from the real world.

Of course, it also means you’re probably going to see your friends nearly every single day.

“I see one of mine walking right there,” says Mit Patel, a sophomore studying pharmacy, while sitting inside the student union Tuesday and pointing out a window, tracing the path of his friend with his finger.

Even though free copies of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are offered just inside the door of the student union, Patel says he wouldn’t be surprised if there were some students who didn’t know about the Japan earthquake and tsunami until days after it happened.

“Unless you have to watch the news for class, or it comes up in a Facebook feed, you might not know about something otherwise,” he said.

Sabrina Smith-Griggs, a freshman psychology major, agrees with Patel about the “bubble.” It’s especially easy to get caught up in it when you’re an underclassman. With no car, no transportation away from campus, it’s easy to get stuck.

“Everything is perfect in this bubble,” Smith-Griggs said. “You forget about the real world.”

Patel and Smith-Griggs do not mean to make the “Butler bubble” seem like a negative thing. It definitely has its positives, they both said.

Can you constantly run into your friends at the large campuses? How about the professors?

“We see our professors all the time and talk to them all the time,” says Katie Arnt, an English and literature major from Fort Wayne.

Tuesday, Arnt was outside the student union with her friend, sophomore Eric Ellis, as the pair watched over a photo shoot for a humor and entertainment magazine they’ve created dubbed “Archives.” Two friends of theirs are kneeling with various parts of blenders. An upcoming issue of the magazine will include a spread titled “Hipsters with Appliances.”

“It’s difficult to go through a day without seeing someone you know,” Ellis says of the small-college atmosphere.

Both Arnt and Ellis also remember the media blitz from last year as the Bulldogs made their way to the cusp of a national basketball championship. Yes, it was crowded, and yes it was a bit intrusive, but that comes with the territory, Ellis said.

And it can also be a good thing.

“Hey, I’m all for something that moves merch(andise),” Ellis says of the attention.

“Maybe it will make tuition a little cheaper.”

Interest skyrockets

Scott Lindenberg came to Butler in 1989. The Fort Wayne native remembers the campus then as one filled with mainly Indiana natives and little on-campus housing.

Buzz surrounding the basketball team was, at its best, “sleepy.”

“The stands would only be about half-full,” says Lindenberg, a commercial real estate agent who lives in the Indianapolis area and still attends Butler games. “There’d maybe be crowds for games against IU or Purdue, but that was it.”

As his college years progressed, Lindenberg recalls the campus beginning to change.

Lacrosse and soccer were brought to the school. With them seemed to come more students from other states. More campus housing was created, which in turn gave students more alternatives to Greek life. More architecture was added as well.

“I think it just has more of an Ivy League feel than it used to,” Lindenberg says.

As the sleepy buzz that surrounded the basketball team has transformed into semiannual Cinderella stories – Butler has made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament three of the past five years – the seats at historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, one of the filming sites in the movie “Hoosiers,” have also been filled.

And interest in the school has skyrocketed.

Since Butler lost the national championship game to Duke last year, applications to attend the school have risen by 41 percent, according to university officials. Requests for information and tours rose by 35 percent, with at least four tours conducted Tuesday.

“Part of that is obviously the tournament factor,” said Mary Ellen Stephenson, a school spokeswoman. “But we also think people are impressed as to what they find at Butler when they visit here.”

Basketball ticket sales have increased by 25 percent in that time, and donations to the athletic teams are also up, Stephenson said. By the same token, some alumni said, ticket prices rose with the basketball program’s success.

Still, even though the buzz is nice and the campus is captivated by another run in the tournament by the Bulldogs, at its heart the school is still a small campus, one that has been through these runs before.

It’s a Tuesday in late March, a matchup with Wisconsin is looming, but the talk isn’t always on basketball.

Instead, it’s about class, about homework, about where everyone went on spring break and the fact that it was warm out – warm enough to at least sit outside on the porch and blast music, to jog or sit outside the student union and sip a Starbucks beverage.

“Yeah, it’s finally nice,” says Marsh, while sitting outside the student union, not thinking about basketball or the possibility of yet another media blitz that may or may not be on the way.

jeffwiehe@jg.net