20 minutes to go: Duke leads West Virginia 39-31 with Butler awaiting winner

20 minutes to go: Duke leads West Virginia 39-31

Duke played the kind of first half that reminds a lot of fans on Tobacco Road of those teams in the 1990s and early 2000s that kept winning championships.

Tough defense. Great ball movement. Excellent shooting.

Now all that’s missing is the follow-through, a second half that can carry the Blue Devils back to the championship game for the first time since winning it in 2001.

Since 2004, when the Blue Devils lost to UConn in the national semifinals, coach Mike Krzyzewski has kept the talent coming and won four ACC tournament and two regular-season titles. But during that span, the Blue Devils never advanced past the NCAA regional semifinals.

That, combined with the two national championships North Carolina has won in the same span, has certainly made it easier to criticize a program that already has its share of haters.

Winning is a good way of silencing just about anyone.

Duke took a 39-31 lead over West Virginia into halftime after miscues on offense by both teams in the closing seconds.

The reason for the Blue Devils’ advantage can be traced to the 3-point arc, where Duke has hit 7 of 14 in the first half — three by Nolan Smith and two each from Kyle Singler and Jon Scheyer. Singler has a game-high 14 points while Smith had 11 before sitting the rest of the half with three fouls.

It was a quick-moving first half because both teams hung onto the ball and there were very few fouls. West Virginia attempted the only three free throws, missing two of them.

The Mountaineers need to start rebounding better — they’re getting beat 14-6 on the glass and have allowed seven offensive rebounds. They also need to get Da’Sean Butler going, after a 1-for-5 shooting performance left him with just two first-half points.

There’s only 20 minutes left in the season for one of these two teams.

The other has Butler awaiting Monday night.

Duke and West Virginia have a pair of impressive streaks going, which tends to happen when a pair of conference champions meet in the Final Four.

The Mountaineers have won 10 in a row, including their run through the rugged Big East at Madison Square Garden and their four victories in the NCAA tournament.

The Blue Devils, meanwhile, have won eight straight in the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament. They’ve also won 16 of 17 since the end of January, the only loss coming to Maryland on the road.

Everybody wondered after the Blue Devils defeated Baylor in the regional finals how they would have performed had Kyle Singler been at the top of his game — rather than going 0 for 10 from the field.

West Virginia is finding out.

Singler has six first-half field goals, two of them 3-pointers, and Nolan Smith just added a 3-pointer to give the Blue Devils a 31-21 lead with under 6 minutes to go. West Virginia coach Bob Huggins quickly called a timeout to try and stop the momentum.

It looked like it worked when Wellington Smith hit a 3, but Smith came down and hit his second in a row to restore the 10-point advantage with under 5 minutes left.

West Virginia had to send someone racing back to the locker room to get a New Jersey for Joe Mazzulla. That crack on the head earlier in the game left him bleeding and some got on his jersey, which means he had to change it.

Mazzulla swapped out jerseys while sitting on a stool during a timeout and was back on the court with a No. 24 uniform that doesn’t have his name on the back. He usually wears No. 21.

John Flowers has a funky looking shot, but it’s been working for him so far.

Flowers just hit his second 3-pointer to close West Virginia within 23-21, before Jon Scheyer showed some quickness in the paint to get an easy basket inside for the Blue Devils.

The Mountaineers are 9 of 15 from the field, but they’ve already been doubled up on the glass Duke has taken advantage of five offensive rebounds to score second-chance points.

CBS must be trying to get all of its commercials done early. That makes three media timeouts in the last couple minutes.

It provides a nice chance to relay a story about Duke guard Nolan Smith.

One of his prized possessions is the NCAA championship ring his late father Derek won three decades ago with Louisville.

Derek Smith went on a cruise in August 1996 and the ship was near Bermuda on its way back to New York city when he suffered an apparent massive heart attack during a reception. Ship medics tried to resuscitate him for 25 minutes before declaring him dead.

“That’s the motivation,” said Nolan Smith, who has a tatoo of his father on his right arm. “That’s what I’m going to carry with me.”

Smith’s journey has brought him to Indianapolis, the same city where his father led the Cardinals to the 1980 national title before beginning his NBA career.

Now it’s Nolan’s turn to chase a championship of his own.

“I see a very high level of focus,” teammate Lance Thomas said Friday. “Nolan’s very confident right now, and this is probably the most focused I’ve seen him since he’s been here. He has the look of a winner right now, and I can’t always say he had that look.”

West Virginia is one of the scrappiest defensive teams in the country, but it sure is having trouble with the inside-outside offense that the Blue Devils are employing.

Kyle Singler just knocked down a 3-pointer after scoring on a twisting layup, and Duke leads 18-11 with under 12 minutes left in the first half. Singler is 4 of 8 from the field for nine points after going 0 for 10 from the field against Baylor in the regional finals.

Miles Plumlee and his brother Mason Plumlee checked in moments ago, and it has to be a thrill for the freshmen to play in the Final Four in Indianapolis.

They’re from Warsaw, Ind., about a 2-hour drive from Lucas Oil Stadium.

Mason Plumlee has already scored a field goal to help the Blue Devils to an 11-9 lead, the assist coming from Nolan Smith, who has three of them.

Brian Zoubek has four early points for the Blue Devils, but they should be even more excited about the two points that Kyle Singler just scored moments ago.

He’d gone 47 minutes without a field goal, getting shut out by Baylor last weekend.

Duke leads 9-7 after the first media timeout and is doing a good job on the offensive end of keeping space, which has allowed for a couple of easy looks inside. After the last bucket by Zoubek, Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins was livid on the sideline.

Talk about a couple rough trips down court for Joe Mazzulla.

The West Virginia guard was called for a questionable 5-second turnover when it looked like he was driving to the corner just after the opening tip, then was bopped in the head and had to come out when he tried to put up a shot from inside.

Kyle Singler is having a rough go for Duke, too. He’s had a pair of shots blocked in the first couple minutes.

This year represents only the second Final Four that Duke has missed since 1953.

Wayne Duke, that is.

The first full-time NCAA employee, who later became commissioner of the Big Eight and Big Ten, Duke wasn’t allowed to make the trip to Indianapolis from his home in Barrington, Ill., after undergoing recent shoulder surgery.

What made the doctors’ decision even tougher is that Duke is a member of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2010 class that is being honored this weekend.

Everyone involved at the Final Four — administrators, coaches, players and fans — should all know his name. Duke is one of the architects of what turned into March Madness.

The drama isn’t over in Indianapolis, even though a good portion of the crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium couldn’t care less who wins the nightcap: The hometown Bulldogs are already in the national championship game.

Nevertheless, fans in Morgantown and Durham are turning up the volume on their TV sets.

West Virginia and Duke have taken the court for warmups, with the winner advancing to the marquee game Monday night. It’s a matchup between the blue-collared and the blueblood, between a coach who has never won a national title and another who has three of them.

West Virginia coach Bob Huggins promised when he took over his alma mater that he’d raise banners back in Morgantown, and he’ll have a chance after guiding the Mountaineers to their first Final Four since 1959. It’s also the first trip for Huggins since 1992, when he led Cincinnati to within two games of a title.

Compare that to Mike Krzyzewski, who has guided the Blue Devils to 11 Final Fours and won national championships in 1991, ‘92 and 2001. Duke already has 33 wins this season, its most since the last title team won 35 games.

Tipoff is just a few minutes away.

Forget about “Hoosiers,” folks. Butler is putting together its own incredible story.

The Bulldogs will be playing for a national championship Monday night.

Baby-faced forward Gordon Hayward scored 19 points and the fifth-seeded Horizon League champions knocked off Big Ten heavyweight Michigan State 52-50 in the Final Four.

Shelvin Mack battled through muscle spasms to add 14 points for the Bulldogs, the team that practices in the same building — Hinkle Fieldhouse — where they filmed the movie “Hoosiers” about the upstart high school team that proved they could beat anybody.

Just like the Bulldogs.

The scrappy team coached by a 33-year-old former marketing employee for Eli Lilly will play West Virginia or Duke for the national title. And just imagine what the atmosphere will be like at Lucas Oil Stadium, a 10-minute drive from the Butler campus.

“I’ll be honest, there’s so many people here I just wanted to focus on the court,” coach Brad Stevens said moments after the game, basking in the adulation that comes with a victory on the game’s biggest stage.

“Both sides really battled,” he said. “We were lucky to be up two at the end, and I think the difference was we held them to 3-0 the last 30 minutes, and we needed to.”

Butler will carry a 25-game winning streak into the championship game, the longest since Duke won 32 straight entering the 1992 national title game.

“Just really excited right now,” Hayward said.

Butler shot just 30 percent from the field and hit 5 of 21 from 3-point range, but the Bulldogs made up for it by going 17 of 24 from the foul line — including two by Ronald Nored, a 61-percent free-throw shooter, with 6.1 seconds remaining.

The Bulldogs fouled on purpose when Michigan State crossed midcourt, and Korie Lucious made the first free throw before missing the second on purpose. But the Spartans couldn’t track down the offensive rebound to put up a tying shot.

Lucious finished with 12 points and Durrell Summers had 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Spartans, who were trying to advance to the title game on the 10th anniversary of their second national championship.

Michigan State was hampered by missing star guard Kalin Lucas, who ruptured his Achilles’ tendon against Maryland in the second round. The Spartans wound up with 16 turnovers, and Butler turned them into a 20-2 advantage in points off turnovers.

And a trip to the national championship game.