INDIANAPOLIS - West Virginia won games this season with defense. Saturday night, the Mountaineers lost their last game because they didn't play it.

Well, at least not like they can.

Not since a bad loss at home to Villanova on Feb. 8 had a team made more than half its shots against the Mountaineers. In seven of the previous eight games, opponents couldn't even reach 40 percent. It wasn't blind luck. It was because the Mountaineers didn't let teams shoot the ball.

They let Duke shoot. And they paid.

"They got us out of character. We usually are not like that on defense,'' Devin Ebanks said. "But we allowed a lot of penetration to the middle. They were able to convert and hit open jump shots, scoring the ball, laying it up. They had a great day and they were probably the better team.''

Yes, Duke was the better team in a 78-57 win Saturday night that ended West Virginia's season one game short of playing for the national championship. And it was because the Mountaineers let them be the better team.

Duke is pretty average if it doesn't shoot the ball well. The Blue Devils do rebound it well and play some defense. But shooting remains their strong point.

West Virginia allowed Duke to shoot better than 50 percent on shots from both inside and outside the 3-point line. And those numbers weren't fabricated by a hot streak here or there. The Blue Devils were over 50 percent on every kind of shot in both halves.

And nothing West Virginia did could stop them. Coach Bob Huggins tried the 1-3-1 zone that has usually been his team's bail-out defense, but it was shredded.

And Huggins took the blame for it.

"We went to the 1-3-1, but we just don't do things very well on the fly, and it's my fault,'' Huggins said. "I think a couple of the assistants thought we should give it a look in the first half to see how they attacked it. I should have done it after a dead ball, and I didn't do it. Then they got a real easy look.

"But they played really, really well. And I've watched a lot of tape. I haven't seen them play that well. And we didn't play very well. And that happens.''

When talking about not adjusting well on the fly, Huggins meant that instead of calling for a switch to the 1-3-1 between possessions he should have done so after a break.

"I shouldn't have gone from playing man to playing 1-3-1 without a dead ball,'' he said. "It was probably what, a six-point game or something like that? Maybe it wasn't even that much. And they hit two 3s when we switched. I shouldn't have done it on the fly. We had to do it. We had to give it a look. But it probably wasn't the right time.''

Duke wasn't surprised when West Virginia opened the game in its man-to-man defense because that's WVU's base and it's also what almost everyone plays against the Blue Devils.

"We prepared for anything. We had a game plan if they did go to zone,'' said Duke guard Jon Scheyer, who had 23 points and six assists. "And the couple times they did, I thought we attacked it pretty well. And against their man, I thought we did a good job, too. We had a good week of preparation. I thought we were really well prepared and we felt comfortable no matter what they did.''

How ineffective was West Virginia's defense? Well, Duke gets its scoring primarily from guards Scheyer and Nolan Smith and 6-8 forward Kyle Singler. Most teams try to take at least one of those options away.

In addition to Scheyer's 23 points, Singler had 21 and Smith 19. They combined for all but 15 of Duke's 78 points, 17-of-20 assists and 12-of-13 3-pointers. They were also a combined 22-for-45 shooting.

"It's a plus, especially if all three of the guys are doing it,'' Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "Usually two of them give you points. A lot of it has to do with the defensive emphasis of another team. They might try to take one guy out of it.

"But all three of them, they worked so well together. They really were very good. To score that many points against West Virginia is a lot. But we hit shots.''