Once again Butler will have to prove mostly everyone wrong tonight as they take on Duke for the National Championship.
There's no secret to why Butler has made it this far in the tournament. They've done it with their defense, and they leaned on that defense more than ever to get by Michigan State on Saturday.
In case you didn't realize this, Butler shot 30 percent from the field. They didn't score a single point for over seven minutes of the second half. It didn't matter because their defense never let up.
The problem is that now you have a Duke team that is coming off their best offensive performance of the season. The big three ( Scheyer, Smith, and Singler) all scored 19 points or more against West Virginia.
Furthermore, Zoubek looked unstoppable on the boards down low. If Matt Howard can't go tonight, then Butler will have virtually no big man to contend with Zoubek down low. That spells disaster for Butler.
It seems almost unbelievable, but Butler has held all five of its tournament opponents under 60 points. I don't see that happening against Duke. They've got too many weapons.
Basically, Butler is going to have to put up a good amout of points itself to win this game. They also can't expect Gordon Hayward to do it all on his own like in the Michigan State game. Not to play devil's advocate here, but Butler was extremely lucky to beat Michigan State.
That kind of performance won't work against a much more potent Blue Devils team tonight. They're capable of pulling it off, but the offense has to start complimenting the defense to beat Duke and complete this great story.
No comments:
Post a Comment