D puts Final Four teams in Indy
INDIANAPOLIS — The West Virginia players came to the stadium with T-shirts that read "Do What We Do" — an unabashed acknowledgment that their style of basketball is often more effective than pretty.
If they could make the shirts in Duke, Butler and Michigan State colors, too, they might have a best-seller.
Hard-nosed, stingy defense, combined with a few flying elbows and some well-timed rebounds, is what got this year's Final Four teams to Indianapolis.
The Mountaineers (31-6) got this far in part by urging coach Bob Huggins to bring back the 1-3-1 zone trap that his predecessor, John Beilein, used with success.
It's hard to argue with the results. West Virginia hasn't lost since Feb. 22. In the East Regional final, Kentucky missed its first 20 3-pointers in a 73-66 loss to the Mountaineers.
"We know how we need to play to win," said Huggins, who has a slightly different take on the T-shirts. "We've got to play to our strengths rather than show everyone all the things we can't do."
Duke is thinking along those same lines.
The thought of Grant Hill or Christian Laettner having an 0-for-10 night and the Blue Devils still winning doesn't really fit into the Duke paradigm.
But against Baylor last weekend, Kyle Singler did that. Singler finished with five points — 12 below his average — while spending most of his energy trying to slow down LaceDarius Dunn. In the second round against Cal, Duke's Jon Scheyer — the Final Four's most prolific scorer at 18.2 points a game — went 1 for 11.
The Blue Devils (33-5), the only No. 1 seed at this year's Final Four, won both, thanks largely to a defense anchored by 7-foot-1 center Brian Zoubek and five more players at 6-8 or taller, including Singler. Duke outrebounded teams 560-443 on the offensive glass this season.
On the other side of the bracket, Raymar Morgan of Michigan State said he fully expects a game played in the 50s or 60s. (The over-under in Vegas is 126.)
Michigan State is, as many will recall, a team known to practice in football pads to gear up for the grind of the Big Ten.
Kalin Lucas, the Spartans' leading scorer this season at 15.2 points a game, will be on the sideline with a ruptured Achilles' tendon. Outside of Lucas, and 11-point scorers Morgan and Durrell Summers, Michigan State has nobody else averaging in double figures.
Not hard to figure out how the Spartans (28-8) win. Their opponents shoot 40.8 percent, and they outrebound teams by nearly nine a game.
"It's going to be a little bit refreshing to have to watch and say, 'How did that team do that?' Not, 'how did Magic Johnson or Carmelo Anthony do that?"' coach Tom Izzo said. "It really speaks to what team sports are about."
When fifth-seeded Butler (32-4) entered the West Regional, the common thought was that they would need a superlative shooting effort to have any chance to knock off No. 1 Syracuse or No. 2 Kansas State.
In destroying the stereotype people had — a plucky underdog whose biggest star is its gym — and showcasing what they really are — a legit, top-10 team with plenty of talent — the Bulldogs won a different way.
They shot only 25 percent from 3-point range against Syracuse but bottled up Orange guard Andy Rautins, who came in looking like a tournament MVP but finished with 15 points and never took over the game.
