And the championship matchup between Duke and Butler offered theN.C.A.A., in Butler’s hometown, a reminder on the largest stage of the quintessential joy of this tournament. Butler — with the disparity in traditions, budgets and name recognition — represented the best of the tournament. But as tournament history has shown, the best team often wins. Behind Kyle Singler’s stellar defensive effort and game-high 19 points, Duke won its fourth title, 61-59.
Duke (35-5) outslugged scrappy Butler, which had won 25 consecutive games, in a tense, edge-of-your-couch game with 5 ties, 15 lead changes and 2 potentially game-winning shots by Butler that caromed out in the final five seconds. “This was a great basketball game,” said the Duke CoachMike Krzyzewski. “I want to congratulate an amazing Butler team. We played a great game and they played a great game.”
Butler’s first chance came when the sophomore forward Gordon Hayward missed a fading 14-foot baseline jump shot with Butler trailing, 60-59. Duke center Brian Zoubek got a hand in Hayward’s face, was fouled after the miss and hit one of two free throws. Hayward rebounded the miss, which was intentional, but his last-chance, half-court gasp hit the backboard and barely front-rimmed out. He collapsed on the floor, spoiling an ending that would make even Bobby Plump, the real-life Jimmy Chitwood in the film “Hoosiers,” blush. “They played good defense and forced me into a tough shot,” Hayward said. “I thought it was a good shot for us. Just missed it long. The last shot it was just a last-second shot and, I don’t know, it missed.”
Since the tournament expanded in 1985, there has been no more dominant sideline figure than Mike Krzyzewski, who tied Adolph Rupp for second in N.C.A.A. championships with his fourth. Krzyzewski’s presence in his 30th season at Duke offered a stark contrast to the 33-year old Butler Coach Brad Stevens, who looks as calm as he does young. But Stevens could not conjure up collegiate version of “Hoosiers,” as Singler and Lance Thomas limited Hayward to 2-for-11 shooting and 12 points. Krzyzewski showed he could still mold a team as well as anyone. Duke guarded with a slap-the-floor ferocity that long defined the program, scored twice in the second half on delightfully designed inbounds plays and battled through second-half foul trouble to the starting big men, Zoubek and Thomas. “It was obviously a physical game,” Hayward said. “They played hard and we played hard. I feel like we pretty much left it all out there.”
Duke’s big three — Singler, Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith — led them again. Singler drained silky jumpers out of intricate sets, Scheyer capped a dynamic senior year with 15 points and Smith played steadily and scored 13. Zoubek proved a terror on the boards, with 11 rebounds and made the game’s best defensive play. Among Duke titles, this one, the Blue Devils’ first since 2001, will resonate as one of its most improbable. The 1991 team had to slay a mighty and undefeated Nevada-Las Vegas team. But this edition lacks a sure-fire high first-round draft pick like Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill or Elton Brand of teams past. Duke won with synergy and teamwork more than an overwhelming roster of talent. It held Butler to 34.5 percent shooting and stayed poised down the stretch after two Matt Howard field goals cut the Duke lead to a point in the final minute.
This was Duke’s 10th appearance in the finals, Butler’s first. The Blue Devils have an endowment of nearly $6 billion more than Butler and spent more than $12 million more on basketball in the latest data available from the United States Department of Education. Butler, with just under 4,000 undergraduates, was aiming to became the smallest college by enrollment to win the national title since Holy Cross in 1947.
“Can it get better than these guys?” Stevens asked. “They came one shot away from the national championship.” Even with the loss, the epic nature of the title game and Butler’s delightful run cemented the team in N.C.A.A. tournament lore. But that didn’t dull the pain for Butler. “For me it’s going to be the loss,” Hayward said of the take-away from the game. “I hate losing. It's one of the worst feelings that I have is losing.”
The occasionally grinding pace of the first half favored Butler, even though the Bulldogs trailed at the break, 33-32. Butler played large portions of the first half without point guard Ronald Nored, its best on-the-ball defender, and Howard. Nored played only seven minutes in the first half and Howard nine. Howard’s status was in question after he sustained a concussion Saturday night againstMichigan State. Howard picked up his second foul 11 minutes into the game, and he did not look particularly good in the time he played. He missed all four of his first-half shots from the field and three of four free throws.
Every potentially magical college basketball story needs an unlikely hero. For Butler, the reserve forward Avery Jukes emerged as that player in the first half. If the scouting report had advised the Blue Devils to lay off Jukes, no one would have blamed them. He was averaging 2.7 points and had not scored 10 points in a game since Dec. 5 against Valparaiso. In the five previous N.C.A.A. tournament games, he had scored 6 points. But at halftime he had 10, more than any other player on the floor. But Jukes’s first half scoring explosion will only be a small footnote on this night.
Instead, the Butler players trudged off the floor in their hometown as losers of a taut and epic one-possession games. Krzyzewski called the game “the toughest and the best one” of the eight national championship games he’s coached in. “Butler University has been on a stage that’s hard to put into words,” Stevens said. “More importantly for the 15 guys in that locker room. It’s the last time they’ll play together. They’ll have it for a long, long time.”
And as change comes to the N.C.A.A. tournament as this generation has known it, this game that perhaps ended an era may be the best one of it.
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