2010 Big East Basketball Tournament: West Virginia vs Georgetown

If anyone ever doubted the importance of this or any other Big East Tournament championship, Saturday night's scintillating showdown between the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Georgetown Hoyas put to rest the notion that these "in between" tournaments - which, on one level, are indeed dress rehearsals for the NCAA Tournament - just don't amount to much in the bigger picture. Coach Bob Huggins' WVU crew and John Thompson III's Hoya boys squared off in a mighty scrap that often felt like a football game. With fierce scrums for loose balls and indelible moments such as GU's Chris Wright laying out his body like a receiver to save a ball near the sideline - and successfully so - the two teams left standing at the end of a riveting five-day event chased a trophy with uncommon hunger and ravenous intensity.

Perhaps it was the thrill of playing in Madison Square Garden on a Saturday night.

Perhaps it was the special player introductions and the souped-up pregame introductions.

Perhaps it was the unique energy that pervaded The World's Most Famous Arena, which had lacked some juice for the second round and quarterfinal sessions but began to pick up some electricity in Friday's semifinals.

In the end, though, only one explanation suffices: West Virginia and Georgetown threw themselves all over the 94-foot slab because the end of another great Garden party in the Big East Conference deserved nothing less than a championship. These two teams expected to win, but they then put forth the effort needed to achieve it. The Mountaineers were looking to win the first Big East Tournament title in the program's history, while Georgetown - already the leader in Big East Tournament titles with seven, wanted to make it a great eight as the No. 8 seed in this year's event.

Yes, these squads wanted a championship something fierce.

In the end, though, only one team could earn the spoils of victory, and with Da'Sean Butler on the floor in West Virginia home whites, the higher-seeded Mountaineers found their mountaintop moment in the city that never sleeps.

After 39 minutes and 51 seconds of dizzyingly intense basketball, with GU center Greg Monroe putting on a clinical display of passing and WVU's whole roster dominating Georgetown on the offensive glass, the Mountaineers and Hoyas were knotted up at 58-apiece with just nine seconds remaining. Huggins had just called timeout on a shaky West Virginia possession that seemed on the brink of collapse. In the timeout, Huggins likely said something that Ohio State coach Thad Matta probably tells his Buckeyes in late-game meeting sessions: "Just get the ball to our star player and get out of the way."

Indeed: If Evan Turner of Ohio State is the Kobe Bryant of college basketball - as shown by his 37-footer against Michigan on Friday afternoon in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals - Da'Sean Butler is the LeBron of this sport. There are no two more clutch players than these buddies, who texted each other during this weekend of championship tournament competition. Who knows what Turner will have in store on Sunday when Ohio State plays for the Big Ten title against Minnesota? Whatever the answer may be, it will be hard for the brilliant Buckeye to top what his friend did in New York at the end of a 40-minute classic.

Out of the timeout, Butler caught the inbound pass at the top of the key. He drove into the paint and, about eight to ten feet from the rim, was met by strong help defense from Georgetown's Austin Freeman, who stopped the forward movement of Butler's body. The West Virginia shotmaker - who opened up the bank late on Thursday night to get WVU past Cincinnati, and who then threw down virtually half of his team's points in a two-point semifinal triumph over Notre Dame on Friday - capped his MVP week in New York with the toughest shot of the tournament, a shot that was also the biggest shot Mr. Butler has ever made in his storied career.

The masterful Mountaineer - conjuring up vivid recollections of another off-balance shot that slew Georgetown at the end of a Big East Tournament championship game - somehow found the body control and touch needed to put the ball on the soft MSG rim and into the net at the final horn. The amazingly deft and dramatic display was eerily reminiscent of Connecticut's Ray Allen throwing down an improbable shot to beat the Hoyas at the very end of the 1996 title tilt. Elite players, the chosen ones in the game of basketball, will the ball into the bucket in the crucible of crunch time, and outside of Evan Turner, no one repeatedly comes through under fire the way Da'Sean Butler does.

Thanks to Da heroics of Da'Sean, West Virginia owns a piece of Big East hardware that will immediately acquire a cherished place in Mountaineer lore. The sight of a team and its fan base - which was out in force on Saturday night at the Garden - singing "Country Roads" in America's urban mecca will be etched in the hearts of the Appalachian school for generations.

Yeah, and these conference tournaments don't matter. Of course they don't.

Big East Tournament Championship Game