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They Won’t Let Their Guard Down

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Great guards win championships.

Print it, paint it, cross-stitch it if you want.

They might as well hang a banner over the court at Tropicana Field for tonight’s national championship game between Duke and Connecticut: In Guards We Trust.

In the college game more than in the NBA--and in the NCAA tournament more than anywhere else--guard play is the name of the game.

Duke center Elton Brand is the probable national player of the year and may yet be the dominant factor, but the talk of the title game is Connecticut’s Ricky Moore versus Duke’s William Avery, two high school teammates from Georgia fighting it out for what you might call the Augusta national championship.

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Jim Calhoun’s first instinct Saturday night as the Connecticut coaches turned their attention to Duke was to put Moore--the defensive stopper who KOd Ohio State’s Scoonie Penn--on Avery, his former understudy at Westside High School in Augusta, then count on Moore to stop the Duke point guard’s devastating penetration.

“He knows most of my moves,” admitted Avery, who grew up down the street from Moore. “And some of my moves, I got from him. He knows me better than anybody.”

Avery was once Moore’s tagalong. Now the sophomore has eclipsed the senior.

“He stayed on one end of the street--the 2700 block of Hazel Street--and I stayed on the 2600 block,” Moore said.

“His eighth-grade summer, he was coming from middle school to high school, and I spent a lot of time taking him with me when I went to play basketball. I knew it would help both of us.”

Now look where they are.

“Last time we played in a championship game, we were in the same locker room,” Avery said. “It’s kind of strange.”

It’s hardly all Avery versus Moore.

Connecticut also has to watch out for Duke sharpshooter Trajan Langdon, who wasn’t very sharp against Michigan State, going three for nine.

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Put Moore on Avery, and that leaves Khalid El-Amin to chase Langdon. That would mean counting on the huskiest Husky to scoot around screens, one of the savvy Moore’s specialties.

“Ricky Moore is an outstanding defensive player,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “He doesn’t really only guard a point. He guards anybody on the perimeter. And I’m not sure that he’ll necessarily be on William. Did Jim say that? Are you trying to confuse me on that?

“I would be surprised if he’s just on William. We really respect who Ricky Moore is.”

Maybe the biggest perimeter matchup is still unmentioned.

It’s Duke’s Chris Carrawell against UConn’s Richard Hamilton, the triple-threat scorer averaging 23.6 points a game in the tournament Krzyzewski calls “as good a scorer as there is in college basketball.”

“He can hit the three, he can drive, and when he gets fouled, he’s mid-80s [83.3%] from the line,” Krzyzewski said.

Said Carrawell: “He’s a combination of everything. He’s even more of a challenge for me than [Maryland’s] Steve Francis, because he’s my height.

“I knew if Francis got by me, I had a couple of inches on him. Hamilton, he’s 6-6. He shoots the three, creates off the dribble.

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“It’s not going to just be me. Hopefully, my teammates will have my back if he starts to kill me.”

Whether either team will be able to consistently get the guard matchups it wants with what might prove to be a pell-mell pace is another question.

“All of our perimeter players have to be ready to cover all of their perimeter players, because of how quickly they take the ball from the defensive end to the offensive end,” Krzyzewski said.

“On Saturday night, we played the best rebounding team--the best offensive rebounding team--in the country in Michigan State. Monday night, we’ll play against the best offensive transition team in the country. As a result, you won’t have set matchups. You’ve got to get back and take whoever’s there.

“William will have to be ready to cover Hamilton at times. Chris Carrawell will have to cover El-Amin or Moore at times. The same thing with Trajan.”

Yes, the Blue Devils and Huskies definitely have their guards up, and the days when the NCAA title game was dominated by Lew Alcindor or Bill Walton seem a long time ago now.

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If there has been a slow changing of the guard in the college game, it might finally have been ushered in by Lute Olson’s Arizona teams.

In 1994, Arizona made it to the Final Four with what amounted to three guards in Damon Stoudamire, Khalid Reeves and Reggie Geary. Then in 1997, Arizona won the NCAA title with Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Michael Dickerson, and Jason Terry off the bench.

In this Final Four, it is the point guard position that has stood out more than any other. Ohio State’s Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd, and Michigan State’s Mateen Cleaves have said their goodbyes, but Avery and El-Amin are still standing.

Matter of fact, it’s hard to think of a recent NCAA champion without a standout point guard, while in the NBA, the Chicago Bulls dominated without a traditional point.

“They are part of the recipe you need in college basketball,” Calhoun said. “You are not going to get here without a great point guard.

“Given the rules that we have--and don’t have compared to the NBA--the floor is all open for all of us. Very simply, the people who have the ball in their hands the most end up turning the game. And that’s kind of a simple explanation of why we are all here, and why the teams that excel in the game have great point guard play.

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“Anybody that’s had success in college basketball, you have to solve zones, and quite frankly a lot of double teams. Isolation situations don’t really develop anywhere near like the NBA, where you have an awful lot of isolation, two-on-two, one-on-one situations.

“I truly believe this, as we’ve seen in the last number of years, the teams have been carried by their guards. Three guards are common things, and often your ‘three’ [small forward] is a big guard.

“The teams that are very successful have great point guard play, because they determine the outcome, because they have the ball in their hands 75% of the time, many times.”

So there is El-Amin, the feisty doughboy who lives for the stage.

“I get excited,” he said. “I pride myself on the big games and making the big plays. That’s how I am. It’s my personality. It just brings out the best in me, situations like this. I don’t know why I get so excited, but I know I like all the attention.”

The Huskies’ “energizer,” Calhoun calls him.

“He was 0 for 12 against Gonzaga, but down the stretch in that game, he’s the one that made the difference.

“He makes us go, not only physically, but psychologically. He’s the guy our kids turn to for energy, for direction, sometimes for courage.”

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And there is Avery, like El-Amin a sophomore who plays well beyond his years.

Those storied pick-up games at Oak Park in Augusta where Moore took Avery as he trained a teammate for their 33-1 run to the Georgia state championship in 1995 seem quite a few years ago now.

“When I played with him, I was about 5-10, 150,” said Avery, now 6-2 and 185. “That’s a big difference. But I haven’t seen a defender like him.”

Friends for life, they will be enemies for 40 minutes.

“I’m not going to get into a personal deal with him,” Avery said. “I’m trying to win a national championship.

“I don’t even know him right now. Until after the buzzer goes off, I don’t know him.”

They know this: They are not the same players they once were.

“He was younger than I was. So, I mean, I was the teacher,” Moore said.

“I thought he did a great job, showing me the path to take,” Avery said. “I think I do want to show him that now I’m just as good, if not better. He taught me too well. Or something like that.

“Everybody in the community looked up to him. I really tried to model my game after him.

“For us to meet for the first time in the national championship, what more can you ask for?”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Big Contributors

Comparing the starting guards in tonight’s national championship game: DUKE

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PLAYER MIN PTS AST Langdon 30.6 17.4 1.9 Avery 30.8 15.0 5.2 Percentage of starting lineup’s points 50.2

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CONNECTICUT

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PLAYER MIN PTS AST Moore 30.7 6.6 3.8 El-Amin 28.7 13.7 3.8 Percentage of starting lineup’s points 45.7

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