Here's the story I had begun, when Kansas led by 3 midway through the
first half: "If it comes down to the last-second shot, Kansas is in
trouble. This team plays hard, and they like each other, and they're
generous to a fault. But there's really nobody on that team, except maybe
Mario Chalmers, who has the personality and the skills to both want to
take the last shot and to actually hit it."
Funny how things work out.
Also
funny how both teams played very well, and according to type. Memphis
pressured the ball, drove to the basket, hit the midrange jumper and
missed clutch free throws; Kansas aggressively defended the perimeter
and pounded the ball inside. There were a few outliers—play that game a
hundred times more and Derrick Rose is more of an offensive threat;
play it a hundred times more and Kansas shoots better than 3 of 12
threes (though, go figure: before Sherron Collins and Chalmers hit
those last two three-pointers, Kansas was shooting 1-10; had Kansas
lost, we all would have been point to this as one of the reasons why).
Since we've been numbers geeks here all along, we'd like to point out that the Memphis collapse wasn't all that bad; according to the Bill James lead calculator,
a 9 point lead with a little over two minutes left to play is only 32
percent safe. Interestingly, this is the same degree of confidence
Kansas had when they were up 40-12 with 27 minutes left to play against
North Carolina. Of course, Kansas closed that one out.
There is
the free throw issue, of course, and though everyone is going to make a
lot of noise about how Calipari shouldn't have dismissed his team's
poor shooting so lightly, I'm inclined to agree with those who believe free throws have very little to do with winning.
Having a team that shoots a high percentage from the line is nice to
have, of course, but it's a far less valuable skill than, say,
offensive rebounding, which gets your team the most precious commodity
in the game—more possessions. And though the misses were easy to point to as the reason for the Memphis collapse,
far more important was allowing Kansas to steal the inbounds pass with
under two minutes left to play; Collins hit a 3 that brought the score
to 60-56.
But enough rehashing. As they say in Bull Durham,
the moment's over, and the first midnight scrimmage is only six months
away. The big question facing Bill Self now comes in the form of the Devil
Boone Pickens with an offer of, well it's an obscene amount of money,
really, to coach Oklahoma State, which just happens to be Self's alma
mater. Will Self take it? When Devin asked me that last night, I made a
not-very-convincing-even-to-myself argument that Bill Self would never
leave the greatest job in college basketball. And there are already
plenty of columnists saying he should stay put (thanks, Gene Wojciechowski).
Still, I think Devin's right. It's a chance to go home, to a school
that does have a pretty good basketball tradition of its own (even
though their last title came in, ahem, 1946). And, oh yeah, there's maybe Ten. Million. Dollars.
So
maybe he's gone. And really, with no hard feelings; Self is by all
accounts a great guy, and he's run a great program at KU. Still, what
shall it
profit a team, if it shall gain the whole world, and lose its own
coach? Well, hundreds of thousands in merchandise sales, etc. for one
thing. A higher national profile. And, maybe a shot at the next
up-and-coming coach. You think Mark Turgeon's available?
And
now, in our own personal One Shining Moment, I must thank you both for
a very nice three weeks of watching and writing about basketball. And
I'm not just saying that because my team won. Truly, this is the most
wonderful time of the year, made even better with such smart writers to
talk it over with. See you all at Midnight Madness.
