SAN ANTONIO — Memphis coach John Calipari’s part-time job throughout the NCAA tournament was scoffing at critics who believed his team’s lousy free throw shooting would catch up to it.
He preached mental toughness. He preached a wobbly kneed 90 percent shooter would bow to pressure while his rugged Tigers would best anyone at a critical moment.
And he was wrong.
Kansas capitalized on Memphis’ seemingly inevitable gag job at the free throw line, parlaying Mario Chalmers’ game-tying 3-pointer and an impressive overtime performance to a 75-68 victory in the NCAA tournament final at the Alamodome.
Darrell Arthur scored 20 points, and Chalmers, the game’s most outstanding player, added 18 points for the Jayhawks (37-3), who collected the school’s first national title in 20 years.
Derrick Rose had 18 points, eight assists and five rebounds, and Chris Douglas-Roberts added 22 points for the Tigers (38-2), who fell a game — and, really, two minutes — shy of the first national championship in school history.
So strong was Rose that he was on the verge of joining Pervis Ellison and Carmelo Anthony as freshmen who willed their respective teams to national titles.
But it was in those closing 120 seconds of regulation the two stars of Memphis’ run to the final wilted. The Tigers led 60-51, only to stumble with turnovers and a rash of missed foul shots.
Memphis entered shooting 61.3 percent, a number bolstered by a superb showing in its last three games. But Rose and Douglas-Roberts combined to go 1-for-5 at the foul line in the final 1:15 of regulation, setting up Chalmers’ dead-eye 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds left to tie it at 63-63 and force overtime.
The Jayhawks never trailed in the extra session, their lone moment of nerves evident when Brandon Rush missed a transition layup only to grab the rebound and put it back in.
Ultimately, it was Chalmers and Sherron Collins who knocked down four foul shots in the closing minute, with Collins finishing off the first overtime final since 1997, dribbling away the final seconds while holding a finger aloft.
Kansas’ ecstasy came at the expense of Memphis, which already established a record for victories in a season. Calipari insisted the real record required another win, and it surely would have proved to be a resonant one in the sport.
The Tigers were vying to become the first team outside of a power conference to collect a championship since Jerry Tarkanian-led UNLV pulled it off in 1990, and there were unceasing comparisons between the unexpected powerhouses built by charismatic salesmen with a theatrical bent.
For about five minutes in each half, both Douglas-Roberts and Rose proved they were the best individual players in the building.
But thanks to a steady team with a balance strikingly similar to their predecessors as champions — Florida the last two seasons — the Jayhawks collected their third NCAA title in diametrically opposite fashion of the way Danny Manning willed the Danny & The Miracles team of 1988 to greatness.
It was not so much a Rock Chalk revival as a long-delayed return to the summit of the sport. Kansas never went away after its 1988 title, but all of the conference tournament titles (six), No. 1 seeds (six) and Final Fours (four) in the ensuing two decades couldn’t satiate the craving of one of the heartland’s favorite teams.
This should. It also places Bill Self in the pantheon of coaches once considered incapable of hoisting a trophy who dispelled such notions this decade, joining Gary Williams, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams and Billy Donovan as those who have dispensed that burden in the most powerful manner possible.
Self pulled off a title just two years removed from back-to-back first round losses to Bucknell and Bradley and just a season after the Jayhawks fell in a regional final to UCLA. But Kansas encountered some unusual good fortune last spring when Brandon Rush’s dreams of bolting for the NBA were dashed when he tore his right ACL.
Rush’s return set up a loaded, talented team that would rely upon depth more than any other trait. Six Jayhawks produced 20-point games during the season, and that total did not include sturdy senior Sasha Kaun or freshman Cole Aldrich, who helped contain North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough in Saturday’s semifinals.
Indeed, Kansas’ coronation probably should be looked upon as the validation of balance as arguably the most critical component to a title team. Seven of the last nine national champions featured five players averaging at least nine points, and back-to-back tournament champions now have featured a leading scorer averaging less than 14 points.
No doubt the Jayhawks possess a cadre of NBA-caliber players — and Rush and forward Arthur could be among those who leave college on the high of a title in the coming weeks. But Self’s greatest achievement was arguably melding his players into a smart, fundamentally sound up-tempo team capable of dispatching a pair of No. 1 seeds to win a championship.
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