Duke players sit in the locker room after losing to Villanova 77-54 in men's NCAA college basketball tournament
Tonight The third-seeded Villanova Wildcats beat Duke for the first time in more than 50 years. to win 77-54 and advance to the East regional final. It was Villanova's 14Th NCAA victory over a higher-seeded team -- the most in tournament history.
Villanova (29-7) will now play Big East rival and No. 1 seed Pittsburgh (31-4) on Saturday for a trip to the Final Four.
The wildcats are 14-12 as a lower seed since 1979, including their 1985 run to the national championship as a No. 8 seed -- the lowest ever to win it all. This Saturdays match up between Pitt and Nova should be a great one.
Tonight's game showed Nova's ability to spread the floor and make plays. There Ability to create shots for each other and defend was the difference maker in tonight's game. As i watched tonight's game i knew that for Villanova to be successfull they had to control the tempo and play solid defense.
It wasn't the offense that made the difference against Duke, it was Nova's defense. So Villanova a team who is known for offense and scoring points in bunches tonight will be known as the team who played solid defense.
Duke never really showed tonight that they were in a solid rhythm.Villanova's 3 quarter press defense took a nice bit of time of the clock every time Nova scored a basket. Duke's big three (Henderson, Scheyer, Singler) shot horrible from the field tonight shooting a combined total of 9-45 from the field. "We were never in a flow," said guard Kyle Singler, who led Duke with 15 points. "From the start, it was a snowball effect. When something got bad, it just got worse."
We have to give credit to the Villanova's defense but we also have to put blame on the big 3s supporting cast. The Duke Bench gets respect and love from us when the team is winning but no one never puts the blame when they lose. So I will be the first. The bench was missing tonight and didn't help Duke stay in this game even with its best 3 players struggling.
We just didn't hit, didn't hit," Scheyer said. "We were getting the shots we wanted. We just weren't hitting. Obviously, we thought we played terrible in the first half and we were only down 3 points, and we were encouraged by that."
Nova played solid man to man defense and provided full court pressure after every made basket in the second half to wear the Blue devils down. In the second half Nova went on a 13-1 run that blew the game open.
Coach Ks teams lack of dept finally caught up to them tonight. Duke's bench did not show up tonight and for a team to win a national championship a bench is needed. If you look at the Previous national champions (Uconn, Florida , Kansas and UNC). They have all had deep benches and used there bench as a weapon in this tournament.
The Big 3 of Duke are great players but didn't get much help tonight. Nova's big 3 (Reynolds , Cunningham and Redding) all played Decent tonight and had there share of a bad shooting as well but did get help from there bench. Besides the big 3 Nova did have 3 other players with 7 or more points to help with the scoring load.
This is most definitely a disappointing night for Duke. a team who could have easily slid right into the Elite Eight and possibly the Final Four, Nova just had the better night. Defense and controlling the tempo are the keys to winning in this tournament and Nova did them both well.
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