Defense will decide Butler-VCU contest

April 2, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

HOUSTON

That Butler and VCU proudly wear the same small-conference, lovable underdog label is readily apparent.

Less obvious is their shared devotion to the not-so-sexy practice of hard-nosed, aggressive defense — long a trademark of Butler’s game but much more of a surprising late-season development from the running, gunning Rams.

“That’s what’s got us here. For five straight games, we’ve been playing great defense,” VCU forward Jamie Skeen said. “If we play great defense again against Butler, we can probably come out with the win.”

Eighth-seeded Butler (27-9) plays VCU, which has gone from the “First Four” to the Final Four, in the national semifinals tonight.

“It’s more of a challenge because you know everybody is looking at their defense, how good they are,” VCU point guard Joey Rodriguez said. “We want to come out and try to prove to people we can play defense just as good as them.”

The Rams (28-11) are shooting an 44 percent from long range in the NCAA tournament. They’ve finished with 12 3s in three of their first five games, with Brandon Rozzell making six on his own against Georgetown and Bradford Burgess doing the same against Florida State.

Yet they’re in the Final Four because they shut down Southern California, Georgetown, Purdue and Florida State before manhandling top-seeded Kansas.

“They keep teams off balance,” said Matt Howard, Butler’s leading scorer and rebounder. “You have to be prepared for multiple looks. They’re going to press. They’ll play a little bit of zone. Then they also have a good man-to-man. I think when you’re really scoring the ball really well, too, that gives you energy defensively. I think you can make an argument they’ve scored as well as anybody.”

Butler is one of the soundest fundamental teams in the game. They can shoot, and they do it quite well. Howard shoots almost 49 percent, while Andrew Smith is averaging almost 9 points a game on 62 percent shooting.

But when the Bulldogs’ season was on the verge of slipping away this year with three straight losses and four in five games, it was defense, not offense, that turned things around.

“We really focused on the defensive end of the floor,” Howard said. “We weren’t guarding the way we normally had, and I think that was really important for us to get back to that.”

Butler now has won 13 straight, best of any of the Final Four teams. It is giving up 59.6 points during the stretch, almost eight points better than its average through the first 23 games of the season.