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Duke-Arizona Q&A Once again, Battier does the little things
Updated: Tuesday April 03, 2001 6:58 PM
CNNSI.com: First off, what were your general impressions of Duke in the title game? Grant Wahl: It's the same reaction I had after seeing the game against Maryland: Shane Battier does all the amazing little things on the court to make them win. It was even a little more noticeable at the end with his big dunk and the amazing tip-in. I'm still trying to figure out how he did that. And there was another play where the ball was loose, and he lunged out of nowhere, got his hand in and tipped the ball to a teammate to keep possession. CNNSI.com: Mike Dunleavy is not the first name that comes to mind when we think of Duke. How big did he come up against Arizona? Wahl: I saw it in both games this weekend -- Carlos Boozer on Saturday night and Dunleavy tonight -- where a third option comes up huge for Duke. There was that 45-second span where he got open looks and hit the shot. And the funny thing is, as he admitted after the game, his shooting hasn't been great lately. He had met up with one of the assistant coaches Sunday, who talked about needing to be more aggressive on the offensive end, and he pointed out that he still missed his first two shots of the second half. So those three bombs that he hit kind of came out of nowhere. But Arizona was so focused on stopping Jason Williams and Battier that they missed a couple assignments, and the next thing you know, this other guy has 21 points. CNNSI.com: Arizona's guards Jason Gardner and Gilbert Arenas were a combined 6-of-28 from the field. How did Duke shut these guys down?
Arizona fans and head coach Lute Olson weren't happy about the officiating, either. That didn't cost them the game by any means, but they may have somewhat of a beef when Battier doesn't get his first foul until the last four minutes of the second half. But at the same time, look at how he defended Loren Woods in first half, he was pretty smart. He was letting Woods get shots off, he was defending him straight up, not trying to do anything too crazy, and Woods was still only 5-of-10. CNNSI.com: Woods did manage to dominate (22 points, 11 rebounds), yet Duke was able to overcome it. How? Wahl: No one else really hurt them. Richard Jefferson did a little, but the guards didn't do anything. And if you shut down Arizona's guards, you're going to do all right. I just think overall, Duke has the two best players in country, and when you have that as an option, and when you have some other options like Boozer and Dunleavy, you're going to be tough to beat. CNNSI.com: What kind of legacy does Battier leave now that he won a national championship? Wahl: He's a pretty rare breed, especially in these days. To stick around all four years, and improve each year -- there's not may people who can do that now, and win a national championship on top of it. I'd like to think that he won't end up a rare breed, that there are guys out there who want to go to college, who want to play in the NBA, too, and will see this and realize this is a way to get there. CNNSI.com: What about Mike Krzyzewski? How badly did he want to get that third national championship and join some elite company? Wahl: From everything I've heard, I don't think that was the primary motivating factor. But I think when he looks back at what happened to Duke in the '94-'95 season, and how the program struggled so badly without him, this for him must be gratifying, even if publicly, I don't think he's looked at it in those terms. But this is a program that hadn't won a championship since '92, had been to "only" two Final Fours since '94. I think people just assume it's more than that, but it's not. The players talked about how important it was to win a third title for Coach K, but from everything I heard from Krzyzewski himself, it was really important to him to win those first two titles because it defined what he was able to do with this program. But now that he's got his family, his grandchildren, it's not as important to him whether he's measured by how many titles he's won. CNNSI.com: What can you say about Arizona, a team that was picked to get this far in the preseason but went through so much in between. Wahl: It's a team that needed Olson back in January to make the sacrifices those individual players needed to make. The players on that team in turn helped Olson get through the very difficult time he was having. I was around that team through late December and early January, and I saw how poorly they were playing. It's pretty remarkable to see how far they've come since losing to teams like Mississippi State at home. It was remarkable to see how well they pulled it together. A lot of times I'll go on about how it's not the coaches aren't playing the game, they aren't as important as people make them out to be. And maybe they aren't. But the head coach is important sometimes, too. Olson's team just getting here showed that, and if you look at Duke, what Coach K did with his staff to kind of redefine this team after Boozer got hurt, that saved the season for them. CNNSI.com: Finally, we have to ask -- do you see these teams back in this game next year? Wahl: I don't know -- a lot of questions are going to be answered in next couple weeks about who comes back. Arizona's going to lose Woods and Eugene Edgerson, at least. I don't know how likely it is that some of these other guys will go pro, but Arizona could lose as many as four or five. A worse-case scenario for Arizona is what happened to Duke a couple years ago, with just a wave of players leaving. If Arenas leaves, for instance, Gardner could leave, Michael Wright could leave, and Jefferson could leave. There are varying degrees of possibility. As for Duke, Battier and Nate James are done, but most of its team is going to be back. Duhon's going to be really good, and Dunleavy's going to be really good. Williams supposedly will be back. And Rutgers transfer Dahntay Jones is a very good player. One of the big questions will be whether Boozer sticks around. The word earlier in the season was he was turning pro, but now he'd be foolish not to come back.
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