SALT LAKE CITY — Butler coach Brad Stevens carries around an adage as cliché as one of those rubber wrist bands.

“If you don’t believe it,” he says, “You can’t achieve it.”

Even a dreamer has a limit; a threshold between reality and fantasyland.

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Only once this season did Stevens, the quintessential dreamer who once worked in marketing for the drug company Eli Lilly before getting into coaching, allow himself to consider what the dream would feel like.

After beating Murray State last weekend to advance to the Sweet 16, the Butler bus was passing Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, site of the Final Four, when Bradley Kent Stevens turned to his wife, Tracy, and for the first time spoke dream-talk.

“That would be cool,” said Stevens.

Butler is the new cool.

Not because it’s the Horizon League school from Indianapolis, that is going home to play in the Final four, but because it is going home to win the Final Four. And after yesterday’s 63-56 win over second-seeded Kansas State in the West Region final, is anyone really going to doubt the fifth-seeded Bulldogs.

“I think this is what we expected at the beginning of the season,” guard Ronald Nored said.

Yes, Butler plays in the basketball shrine known as Hinkle Fieldhouse, where the championship game scenes from the movie “Hoosiers,” were shot.

Yes, Butler is where the players scratch the ears of their bulldog mascot during lineup introductions before every game.

Yes, Butler star Gordon Heyward, the Most Outstanding Player in the West Region from Brownsburg Ind., got dragged to Purdue basketball games because of this parents are alums.

“Some people are going to want to blow this out of proportions,” CBS color commentator Len Elmore told The Post. “This is not ‘Hoosiers.’ It’s about playing basketball. It’s not about the size of the school. It’s not about blue-chip players. It’s about playing as a team. And no one does that better in this tournament than Butler.”

That’s the beauty of this. Butler isn’t a quaint story, or an aberration.

Butler has the nation’s longest win streak at 24 games. Butler has two players — guard Shelvin Mack and Hayward — who won gold medals as members of the USA Under-19 team. Butler has won at least 20 games for five straight seasons.

Some Butler players, such as Nored, are sick of “Hoosiers.”

“Our annual Brad Stevens’ Butler Basketball Camp, we have the movie room,” said Nored. “For some reason, every week we go four weeks straight, four days, every day for every week, kids want to watch ‘Hoosiers.’ It’s the most annoying thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

Other Butler players, such as Mack, have never even seen “Hoosiers.”

“People are getting on me to watch the movie, but I haven’t found time to fit it into my schedule,” said Mack.

No joke. Butler is going to the Final Four because it is talented and it is prepared.

“Butler basketball, while we’re on the floor, it’s based on a lot of values off of it,” said Steveens. “But while we’re on the floor, it’s based on winning the next possession.”

Butler did that. They outrebound Kansas State 41-29. they trailed for the first time 52-51 and went on a 12-2 run.

“It’s OK to call us a mid-major or Cinderella or whatever,” said Stevens. “We’re still playing.”

lenn.robbins@nypost.com