After 2480+ minutes and 62 games, in all comes down to the final 40 minutes and one more game for the NCAA Basketball National Title. The Duke Blue Devils have been here before, 14 times and they have won the national title three times. This will be the Butler Bulldogs first national title appearance and with this appearance they hold the hopes and dreams of every Cinderella team that has ever played in the tournament.

The college basketball odds makers have the basketball royalty Duke as -7 point favorites over the underdog Butler and the predicted game total is set at 128 points.

Monday April 5, 2010
Butler +7
Duke -7
Total 128
Location: Lucas Oilfield Stadium-Indianapolis, IN
Game Time: 9:15 pm EST
TV: CBS

After their first win, the media has been behind the Butler Bulldogs as the Cinderella team of the tournament but as we’ve mentioned before here, Butler came in to the tourney as a fifth seed and regularly ranked in the top 15 in the weekly national rankings. Despite their mid-major label, the Bulldogs are not a glass slipper team. They have won 25 straight games and their defensive work in the tournament has been masterful. They successfully frustrated and shut down the number one and two seeds in the West Regional, Syracuse and Kansas State.

In their final four game against MSU, Butler wunderkind Coach Brad Stevens outcoached college basketball legend Tom Izzo and now will have to devise a plan to outcoach hall of famer Mike Krzyzewski. Stevens is the second youngest coach ever to coach in the National Title game, Branch McCracken led another Indiana team to a National Title at 31 years of age, when the Hoosiers won the title in 1940. The spirit of the Hoosiers is alive and well as the sports media likes to point out at every turn but Butler has more of a chance than Jimmy Chitwood’s team did in the movie. The Bulldogs live and die by their ability to shut down their opposition; Butler ranked ninth in the nation allowing only 59.4 points a game. Offensively they rank 174 with only 69 points scored per game.

The Duke Blue Devils had the easiest path to the final four but they made short work of a very tough West Virginia team. The Blue Devils have gradually gotten better since their last national title appearance and a title win would be the ultimate goal for a Blue Devils team devoid of any future NBA stars, Kyle Singler will be a borderline first rounder this year.

We know the experience advantage lies with Coach K and of course the Blue Devils hold the advantage of number of appearances in the Title game but the biggest advantage that few will mention on the CBS broadcast is the amount of money Duke spends on its program and its players dwarfs that of the Butler Bulldogs. Last season Duke spent $394,068 per player while Butler spent $347,108 on player expenses for the entire team.

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The biggest advantage the Bulldogs will have is playing in the Lucas-Oilfield Stadium, which is about eight miles from the Butler campus; the crowd will be electric and highly partisan towards the Bulldogs. As much as we like to think the home crowd will make a difference it didn’t work so well for Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans last season. The Spartans were spanked by the North Carolina Tar Heels 89-72 in the National Title game on Ford Field in Detroit.
 

 

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