After all the TV cameras had gone away, after all the questions from reporters had stopped, after Lamont Butler Jr. boarded the bus back to his team’s hotel on Saturday night, the euphoria began to ebb. His parents asked Butler to come down to the lobby to celebrate the moment — his go-in-or-go-home jumper at the buzzer that sent San Diego State into the N.C.A.A. men’s championship game.

Butler said he just wanted two things: a shower and some quiet.

So after he cleaned up, Butler took the elevator down to his parents’ room, where they had congregated with his sisters and more than a dozen aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews.

“Lamont doesn’t like a lot of attention,” his father, Lamont Sr., said Sunday morning. “He said, ‘Dad, can I come to your room? It’s too overwhelming.’ So he came in and just sat down, like nothing happened. I said, ‘Do you know you just hit the biggest shot in San Diego State history?’ He was more happy that we were happy.”

This was apparent to the millions who watched the moment on TV.

With the clock ticking down, Butler raced down the court with his team trailing by a point, trying to get “downhill,” as his coach had suggested. When Butler was cut off at the baseline, he did not panic even as he nearly stepped out of bounds. He took a one-step dribble to his left and suddenly a space cleared, allowing him to rise up and coolly sink a jumper from the wing as the buzzer sounded.

As the ball nestled through the net, Butler … just stood there.

Aguek Arop, an Aztecs forward, was the first to reach him, wrapping Butler in a bear hug and lifting him in the air. Soon, the cavalry — some of whom had sprinted off the bench — arrived, engulfing him. Darrion Trammell, the senior guard, stood with his hands on his head, trying to grasp what had just happened.

Meanwhile, Butler just stood there, steadied amid the mayhem by an inner peace.

He smiled, but he did not roar. He grasped the moment, but he did not thump his chest. He had been here before — his 3-pointer at the buzzer at New Mexico had clinched the Mountain West Conference title — but not exactly like this, on center stage in a football stadium.

As he told wave after wave of reporters the same thing — “I’m just happy it went in” — it was delivered more as a clinical assessment than as thanks for a gift from the basketball gods.

If the nation was introduced to Butler, it turns out this is who he is.

When he was not much older than 2, growing up in Moreno Valley, Calif., about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles, his mother, Carmisha, already saw in her little boy an old soul. When his three older sisters played basketball games, little Lamont stopped bouncing his basketball and sat on it while he watched. He was given a nickname, Man Man, that he answers to today.

“Blessed, blessed — that’s the one word I can say,” his mother said on Saturday night, wiping away tears moments after his shot. “It was his time to shine, and he did it. He did it and I knew he would. I’m just overwhelmed, overjoyed.”

As the Aztecs have taken each new step in this tournament, their resolve has been tested on the court. They trailed top-ranked Alabama by 9 points in the second half before rallying to advance beyond the round of 16 for the first time. They needed Trammell’s cool hand at the free-throw line to get past Creighton in the South Regional final. And they rallied from 14 points down in the second half on Saturday against Florida Atlantic. The only time they led the Owls in the second half was at the final horn.

It is not a coincidence, they say, that a lengthy list of travails off the court has been a fount of inspiration.

Mark Fisher, a beloved son of former Coach Steve Fisher, is afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis but attended his first away game in two years on Saturday. Arop, one of 10 children, fled civil war in South Sudan with his parents as a toddler, spending three years in a refugee camp in Egypt before immigrating to the United States.

Injuries caused Arop to give up basketball briefly. Center Nathan Mensah nearly had his career cut short by a pulmonary embolism. The older brother of senior guard Keshad Johnson is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot.

“Every athlete, in order to make it, you’ve got to have a why, you’ve got to have a reason you’re playing the game of basketball,” Johnson said. “Our guys, there’s a lot of things they go through in their life where they have a why, where they put blood, sweat and tears in — not only for us, their teammates, but their family, friends, people that are counting on them.”

So it was, then, that Butler’s shot carried additional freight when it went up.

A year ago, one of his sisters, Asasha Hall, was shot and killed in her home in Hemet, Calif. Hall had been a regular at San Diego State home games, sitting about four rows behind the Aztecs’ bench, cheering when Lamont played well and scolding him when he didn’t.

“I think about her every day, every day since she passed,” Butler said on Sunday. He wears a necklace with her initials and has a photo of Asasha on the home screen of his phone. “She was one of my biggest supporters. I know she’s up there happy right now watching me play the game that I love. I think she was with me that shot. I think she guided the ball in a little bit.”

Her death gave Butler reason to contemplate a lot about his life.

He took time with his parents and sisters. He had long talks with Johnson, one of his roommates. And he allowed himself to lean on the shoulders of his teammates and coaches.

Basketball had always been his love, and he loved to work at it. The dribble move he used to extricate himself on Saturday night was a move he had worked on over the summer. But in the last year, he came to the conclusion that, as he grieved, he needed the game.

“I just truly decided that basketball was going to make me happy again,” Butler said.

His parents have seen that joy start to come back to their son. The healing, though it may never be complete, takes place one day at a time. And so as Butler sat in their hotel room, marveling at the highlights of his shot that flashed across the television screen, his father took note of his son’s grace — and the gift he had bestowed on them.

“Everybody in that room, it was no small expense for them to get here,” Lamont Sr. said. “I told him he paid everybody back. They saw history last night.”

Andrew Keh contributed reporting.

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