And then there were four...

There's a coach they call "Huggy Bear" and a team better known for its fieldhouse than its players. There's a Final Four regular that hardly anyone figured would get this far and, bringing a wee bit of normalcy back to the party, there is Duke.

One of the most unpredictable NCAA tournaments in recent history served up a bit of the familiar for the Final Four - and a good dose of something completely different.

Coached by Bob "Huggy Bear" Huggins, West Virginia will make its first appearance since 1959, back when Jerry West played guard. Its opponent Saturday will be Duke, the only No. 1 seed to make it to Indianapolis.

The other game features Butler against Michigan State in a meeting of two No. 5 seeds - the first time that's happened.

Butler, enrollment 4,500, plays in the gym where they filmed the basketball classic "Hoosiers" and is making its first Final Four appearance. Michigan State is making its sixth and perhaps most unexpected trip in the past 12 years.

The biggest chance Brad Stevens ever took, the best game plan he ever drew up, had nothing to do with a prized recruit or some brilliant set of Xs and Os scrawled out on a greaseboard.

Instead, it came on the day he decided to scrap the business route and go all-in with his first love, basketball.

Ten years after he took the chance and quit his marketing job at a pharmaceutical company to get into the coaching business, the 33-year-old Stevens has led Butler to the Final Four - one of the youngest to ever take a team this far.

He's also a record holder - with more wins than anyone in his first three seasons as a head coach, at 88 and counting.

"Right now," Stevens said of the decision to leave Eli Lilly, "it looks like a great idea. At the time, I thought it was something I really wanted to try and really wanted to do."

At 23, fresh out of college and with an understanding girlfriend who would later become his wife, Stevens went for it.

Nothing overly unique there.

But anyone who's spent any time in college sports knows the progress line for a post-grad assistant rarely points as sharply upward as Stevens' did.

None of his three coaching counterparts in the Final Four are within 20 years of him. All have been major successes. All were still paying their dues a decade into their coaching careers.

Mike Krzyzewski, 63, spent three years in his post-grad life serving in the Army and directing service teams. He got a job as an assistant to Bob Knight in Indiana, then returned to Army for another five years as head coach before heading to Duke, which didn't become a regular in the big-time until Coach K had been there a while. Krzyzewski's first trip to the Final Four with the Blue Devils came in 1986, when Stevens was 10.

Bob Huggins, 56, of West Virginia spent the first dozen years of his coaching career bouncing between assistant jobs at big schools and head jobs at small schools before he got his first whiff of big-time success at Cincinnati.

And Tom Izzo, 55, famously coached at Ishpeming High in the Upper Peninsula, then went to his alma mater, Northern Michigan, as an assistant, before spending a dozen seasons as Jud Heathcote's assistant at Michigan State. Izzo took over the Spartans in 1995.

"I've been very impressed with Brad, how he's handled everything," said Izzo, who may have noticed Stevens from afar, but now must deal with him on the sideline, Saturday in the national semifinals.

"He seems like a very humble guy - a blue-collar guy with a white-collar way of putting it," Izzo said.

In precisely that manner, Stevens said he never put a timeline or a deadline on his coaching pursuit, even though the money at the entry level of that profession lands most people below the poverty line.

"I was told by a person at Lilly, early in my time, that the secret is just to do the job to the best of your ability and don't worry about anything else," Stevens said. "You never put a timeline on anything else, and just try to do the job you're assigned, and do it well."

To get in the door, Stevens got Thad Matta to hire him as a low-paid administrator. When Matta left, Todd Lickliter became head coach and made Stevens a full-time assistant.

Lickliter's departure for Iowa at the end of the 2006-07 season put Butler in a bind - without much time to find a replacement, lest the Bulldogs lose a grip on their recruiting class. Lickliter left on a Monday. Stevens had an interview today, another on Wednesday and a contract by Wednesday night.

Which is how this remarkably fast success story stayed on track.

"We basically had a meeting with our athletic director and told him that we wanted to stay with somebody who was already there at Butler," senior guard Willie Veasley said. "Coach Stevens is the one he picked. As you can see, that was a great decision, the right decision. His age doesn't really mean nothing when he coaches because he's just a brilliant coach. He always sets us up for success in any situation."

He has had obvious moments of coaching brilliance in this tournament, such as when the regional final against Kansas State was tied at 54, with about 3 minutes left. Stevens called a timeout, called for a backdoor, alley-oop play that had been there earlier in the game but hadn't worked. This time, it did, and Gordon Hayward took a pass from Ronald Nored for a basket that started a game-winning 9-0 run.

More notable, though, is Stevens expertise on breaking down tape and looking at statistical trends to find opponents' weaknesses.

Depth carries Duke to another Final Four

DURHAM, N.C. - Duke is headed to another Final Four after showing it takes more than a cold night from one of the "Big Three" to stop the Blue Devils.

Kyle Singler missed every shot he took in the regional final. In an earlier round, Jon Scheyer was 1-for-11.

"It's not always about what we do in terms of shooting," Scheyer said after beating Baylor in the South Regional final. "If we have a couple of off shooting nights ... usually the three of us try to make up for it in other ways."

And they have. Duke has won three of four NCAA tournament games by double figures. The Blue Devils play West Virginia on Saturday In Indianapolis.

Duke (33-5) depends on the trio for most of its scoring. For the most part, they've come through all season. Each averages at least 17 points, and the threesome combines to average more than 53 points - nearly 69 percent of Duke's points.

Michigan State leaning on Summers' shots and slams

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Durrell Summers has had nothing but perfect timing lately.

Summers is averaging 20 points over the last four games for the first time and, lo and behold, Michigan State is back in the Final Four. His play comes after a season that saw him benched at one point.

"Durrell has been dynamite," coach Tom Izzo told The Associated Press on Monday. "He's been playing his best basketball."

Summers scored 21 points on 8-of-10 shooting in Sunday's win over Tennessee, sealing most outstanding player honors for the Midwest Region. He made a 3-pointer with just under 3 minutes left that put the Spartans ahead 69-66 and the shot proved to be a big one in the 70-69 victory.

Summers has scored 80 points in the NCAA tournament - making 56 percent of his shots overall and 53 percent of 3-pointers - and is averaging 4 1/2 rebounds a game.

If the junior shooting guard can keep it up, it will improve Michigan State's chances of beating Butler on Saturday and the winner of the Duke-West Virginia game for the national championship.

WVU's Huggins unsure if Bryant will play

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - West Virginia went to Duke country to get help for point guard Darryl "Truck" Bryant's broken right foot.

While the Blue Devils were beating Baylor on Sunday in the South Regional final, Bryant was in Durham, N.C., with Randy Meador, WVU's coordinator of athletic training services, to get fitted for a specially designed shoe.

Meador declined to name the specialist, but said Monday, "It's not like we were at Duke."

Bryant broke his foot last Tuesday and has missed WVU's last two games in the NCAA tournament.

The guard is optimistic about the shoe, which would shift weight away from his fractured fifth metatarsal. Bryant went as far as predicting he could play "like nothing happened" after watching West Virginia beat Kentucky in the East Regional final.

On Monday, coach Bob Huggins took a wait-and-see approach.

Huggins said he won't know anything until seeing Bryant at practice. The Mountaineers (31-6) begin preparations on tosday for their Final Four meeting with Duke on Saturday night in Indianapolis.