West Virginia Mountaineers vs. Duke Blue Devils
The second of two national semifinals is usually the Final Four’s featured Saturday matchup. Such is the case when West Virginia battles Duke in Indianapolis. Click here to bet on this game at Betus.com

The Week That Was: West Virginia
Basketball junkies could live a long time and not see another game like the one West Virginia played last Saturday at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y.

Placed in the East Regional final against the Kentucky Wildcats, coach Bob Huggins knew that his Mountaineers would have to defend really well in order to knock off the top-seeded Wildcats. As it turned out, West Virginia did play solid defense, but it’s also hard to deny that Kentucky missed many makeable shots. Kentucky crushed West Virginia on the offensive glass, 22-9, and used those extra rebounds to kick the ball to wide-open shooters. However, the Cats were cold in upstate New York. They hit only 4 of 32 3-pointers and missed their first 20 attempts behind the arc. Kentucky hit 19 of 35 shots inside the three-point line, but the long ball didn’t drop. As a result, the second-seeded Mountaineers marched on to Indianapolis, 73-66.

The game was also weird because the Mountaineers did something remarkable in the first half against Kentucky. WVU hit 8 of 15 3-pointers, enabling the Big East Tournament champions to remain competitive despite failing to hit a single two-point shot before halftime. (That’s not a joke.)

The Week That Was: Duke
The Blue Devils and coach Mike Krzyzewski are headed back to the Final Four for the first time since 2004. A gritty, blue-collar effort from a team normally thought of as a bunch of soft, finesse-oriented players enabled Duke to defeat Baylor, 78-71, in the South Regional final on Sunday.

Duke’s Lance Thomas – a very unheralded and sometimes criticized forward – produced back-to-back offensive rebounds which led to game-breaking three-point field goals from guards Nolan Smith and Jon Scheyer. It was because of Thomas that Duke snapped a 61-61 tie inside the four-minute mark of regulation and powered past the Bears down the stretch. Duke did hit big shots, but not before the Blue Devils got to work on the glass and outworked a long and active Baylor team that was playing in Houston, a relatively short commute from its campus in Waco, Tex.

To put the importance of offensive rebounding in perspective, Duke snagged 22 offensive rebounds and converted them into 23 second-chance points. Just as instructively, Duke rebounded 22 of its 39 missed shots, which is better than 50 percent. That’s an amazing performance on the glass, and it carried Coach K to his 11th Final Four at Duke.

Outlook & Pick:
Duke has better pure shooters, but West Virginia is long. The Mountaineers have multiple 6-foot-7 defenders with large wingspans that can clog passing lanes and make it hard for shooters to get clean looks. Duke’s Jon Scheyer will need to get free against the 1-3-1 zone WVU coach Bob Huggins is likely to throw at him. On the other side of the divide, West Virginia – despite its three-point shooting festival in the first half of the Kentucky game – is not a good shooting team. The Mountaineers’ best offense is often a missed shot followed by an offensive rebound. Considering the fact that Duke used its own rebounding prowess to defeat Baylor, it’s safe to say that offensive rebounding will be a very big key in this national semifinal. Ultimately, West Virginia has been living on the glass for larger portions of this season. Give the Mountaineers a very slight edge.

College Basketball Betting Pick: West Virginia
Articles Courtesy of Dave D. – Betus.com RSS Feed – Featured on Handicapperspicks.com