At the Alamo, this was one to remember
SAN ANTONIO - I admit it. I didn't get this Kansas thing. I do now. The Jayhawks are the new national champions, and you can say they did it in style.
On Saturday, they came close to knocking out North Carolina in the first round and last night they won it with a KO in the 15th round when they were trailing in points on all the cards.
Down by 9 with 2:12 to go, Kansas came all the way back, tying the score on a Mario Chalmers 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds to go and then dominating the overtime to defeat Memphis by a 75-68 score and bring a third national title to the school with the oldest tradition of all. Like, what other team ever has Dr. James Naismith himself watching from that Great Sports Bar In The Sky?
It took a great team to beat a great team. Memphis was right there, two minutes away from winning it all. It had seized control of the game when freshman Derrick Rose went off on a run that appeared to have nailed down both a championship and a Most Outstanding Player trophy.
Had Chalmers not made the shot that will make him a hero in Lawrence, Kan., for all eternity, the name that would have been on everyone's lips would have been Derrick Rose, who bunched 15 of his 18 points into an eight-minute explosion. Kansas was leading by 3 at 43-40 when Rose began, and Kansas was trailing by 7 at 56-49 when he was done.
And there really was nothing to suggest that it wasn't going to be enough. Memphis was feeling it.
But when Kansas needed help, it came from everywhere. Sherron Collins hit a three. Darrell Arthur, a smooth inside/outside presence, hit a pair of jumpers. What that did was put Memphis in the position its fans dreaded. The Tigers would need to make their free throws.
Everyone was begging for a great game, for an honest-to-God NCAA championship game befitting a pair of No. 1 seeds with a combined record of 74-4, and we got one, complete with a game-tying shot for the ages - a drifting, altitudinous right-to-left straightaway 3-pointer by Chalmers that capped a 12-3 Jayhawks run that had begun with his team trailing by 9 with a scant 2:12 remaining.
Scoring a basket was a real chore in this game. These are teams loaded with athletes, coached by men who allow them to play an aggressive, free-wheeling style on offense while demanding a maximum effort on defense. Memphis had a very hard time getting into any kind of offensive rhythm in the first half. Drives it normally makes against everyone else were taken away by Kansas, a team with three superb guards, backed up by a squadron of active big men, and complemented beautifully by a smooth 6-foot-6-inch future NBA star named Brandon Rush.
But Memphis has some athletes of its own. Kansas wasn't exactly running an offensive clinic against the Memphis defense, either.
How fitting, of course, that Memphis would come so close to a championship and then allow it to slip away by missing free throws. John Calipari has been saying throughout the tournament that his team would make them when it counted, that mentally tough kids would make them, period, and he wasn't worried about foul shooting.
It looked as if he would be proven correct when Chris Douglas-Roberts made a pair to create that 60-51 score, and when he made a second pair to make it 62-56 with 1:39 left. But the senior missed the front end of a one-on-one with 1:15 left (62-58), and he looked anything but confident when he boinged a pair with 16.8 seconds remaining (62-60).
Teammate Robert Dozier dug out the rebound on the second miss, and Rose wound up at the line with 10.8 seconds to go. If he makes both, the game is over. Uh-uh. He missed the first and made the second, making it a one-possession game, or, we should say, a Mario Chalmers possession game.
The overtime was strictly a Kansas affair. The Jayhawks scored first when Douglas-Roberts lost the ball and Rush converted at the other end, and soon they were up by 6 and the Memphis spirit had been broken.
It was a strange NCAA Tournament. Never before had four No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four. There was early excitement when three 12 seeds defeated 5's, and when Davidson emerged with the glass slipper. But the regionals were all duds, and hopes for an epic Final Four were smashed when both Memphis and Kansas cruised into the championship game.
They had real pressure to deliver something memorable, and they did. There were punches and counterpunches. There were lead changes. There were six ties. There were graceful moves to the hoop. There were clever passes. There were thunderous blocks. There was that great Rose outburst. And there was a rare championship game last-minute comeback.
You knew the two best teams were playing. And you might even say you knew Memphis would beat itself by missing free throws.
Just don't say you knew that Chalmers's shot was going in. There was nothing routine about it. There's nothing routine about Kansas, either. That's a T-E-A-M, if I've ever seen one.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.
