KU Jayhawks Defy the Odds

The NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship game between the Memphis Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks was quite simply the most INCREDIBLE basketball game I’ve ever seen. Just two days prior, the Jayhawks stomping of North Carolina was history making in that it relieved Kansas fans' bitterness from coach Roy Williams leaving Kansas five years ago and stealing recruits otherwise headed to KU. With that said, I thought it was totally classy of Roy to stay for the final game with a Jayhawk sticker on his black shirt; he even admitted he was cheering for KU. That felt good and was the right thing to do. But the game for the National Championship topped the North Carolina game, because KU defied all odds – even the crappy CBS announcers were hoping (cheering) for a Memphis victory to "...complete the dream." Sorry boys.

I have a whole new respect for Kansas Coach Bill Self. Brilliant doesn’t even come close. The score was Kansas 51 and Memphis 60 - Kansas was 9 points down with 2:12 left in the game. Memphis just made two free throws in a row. It seemed Memphis would win, the game was over. Memphis had the momentum. Yet Coach Self kept his boys in the game, kept them playing, played the right defense, the right offense, everything was done with expert skill. Kansas knew Memphis statistically was poor at the free throw line, so they made sure to put Memphis' most popular and skilled players on the line. It was a gamble, but inside 2 minutes those Memphis stars choked. KU came up with some huge plays. They intercepted an inbounds pass from Memphis for an easy score. They were 1 for 9 from 3 point range all night, yet inside 2 minutes KU hit two 3 point shots. Mario Chalmers' 3 point shot with 3 seconds left in the game was a shot for the ages. The kind every kid that shoots baskets at the playground or on the driveway pretends is the game winner. In this case, it provided new life for KU. When that sucka swished, I was in awe - I knew KU would win in OT.

After the game, on ESPN, they were spending a great deal of time analyzing what Memphis did wrong and how they could have won the game, with limited kudos to KU. Had Memphis won, you can be sure they wouldn’t have been analyzing how KU could have won, but rather how brilliant Memphis was - to justify all of their pre-game predictions.

Coach Self is so humble. His press conferences are so full of his "nice guy" approach, that for the first few years at Kansas I thought he was faking it. But last night it was clear that he was not. I like that way he put it this time, because he was right when he said, "To win is one thing but to win it like that, well that’s something else."