Blue Devil backcourt shreds Mountaineer guards in Final Four

INDIANAPOLIS — Joe Mazzulla didn’t hurt Duke Saturday night. Neither did Da’Sean Butler, and neither did John Flowers. In short, West Virginia’s trio of guards, a group the Mountaineers desperately needed to score and defend, did neither, and Duke’s equivalent trio took full advantage.

It’s almost unfair to compare the Blue Devils’ “Big Three”—senior Jon Scheyer and juniors Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler—to the West Virginia backcourt. The Mountaineers are not a perimeter team, although their shooting early in the first period Saturday made it seem that way, while Duke’s leading scorer in every game this season has been one of those three players.

But Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, the disparity in the backcourt could not have been more apparent.

Scheyer, Singler and Smith were great in their first appearance in the Final Four. The three scored 23, 21 and 19 points apiece, a combined 63 points, on 22-of-45 shooting, right around 50 percent. All three stepped up to sink clutch 3-pointers when the Mountaineers seemed poised to make a run, and Scheyer especially helped bury West Virginia in the second half with intelligent passing, quality shooting and turnover-free basketball.

The Mountaineers’ guards, meanwhile, won’t remember this loss as fondly as they do their previous meeting with the Blue Devils, the famous upset of No. 2 Duke in the NCAA Tournament in 2008. Mazzulla, Butler and Flowers combined for less points than Scheyer scored by himself, and on the defensive end, they failed to trouble any of Duke’s top scorers. Scheyer, Singler and Smith were able to score by getting to the basket and finishing contested layups, and they also found plenty of space on the perimeter, to the tune of 12 made 3-pointers between them.

“They had a shot for every defense we had, and they were a better team than us tonight,” said none other than Darryl “Truck” Bryant, West Virginia’s starting point guard who broke his foot in practice last week and was unable to play in the Final Four. Bryant, an athletic 6-foot-2 guard, would have presented a difficult challenge on defense for Smith or Scheyer, but in his absence, Duke’s offense flourished.

But Smith, Singler and Scheyer would have been taking much more difficult outside shots if not for the grunt work done in the paint by Brian Zoubek. The big man collected 10 rebounds, including five on the offensive glass, and his kickouts created easy looks along the 3-point arc. In past outings, Zoubek’s passing had been noticed by his teammates but not by statisticians, as Duke’s perimeter players failed to convert on open looks. But not Saturday: Zoubek wound up with an impressive six assists.

“I told our guys… ‘My center is 6-foot-6 and theirs is 7-foot-1,”’ West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins said. “And what happens is they get you so deep, and then he does a great job of putting a body on you. Then it becomes a reaching game, and my experience has been 7-foot-1 guys outreach 6-foot-6 guys every time. They don’t force things. They throw it back out, [and] they get step-in threes.”