College basketball hangover

I gotta admit, I still haven't quite come to grips with the fact that the Jayhawks have finally legitimized their status as an elite college basketball program by winning their first national title in 20 years.

You may have voted in the poll to your right and it seems that the consensus amongst my readers is that Memphis blew the game more than Kansas won it. I have mixed feelings about it. You have to give the Chickenhawks a lot of credit because they made some CHAMPIONSHIP plays in the final minutes to force overtime and then they just dominated the OT to seal it. And it goes without saying but the three-pointer by Chalmers was one of the biggest shots in NCAA Tournament history.

But you cannot ignore the fact that Memphis performed the biggest chokejob since Chris Webber called the infamous nonexistent timeout. There are so many woulduhs, shoulduhs, coulduhs that you can come up with that it's mind-blowing.

In the final minutes it looked like Chris Douglas Roberts was actually trying too throw the game to the point that I think we could have a conspiracy theory on our hands. I was speechless when I saw him slam the ball down nearly drawing a technical. I mean, what player who has played at this high of a level for as long as he has loses their composure to that extent. 

And Calipari should now be recognized as an awful Big Game coach until he proves otherwise. There's really not much he could do about the free throws and apparently he had actually told his team to foul on the Chalmers three so we can't hold that against him. But why would you not call timeout after Chalmers hit it to set up a final play? Two seconds is plenty of time to get off a decent shot. 

And the biggest problem I had was in the overtime period with his team down three with around 50 seconds left he decides to have his team foul instead of play defense, which was idiotic in of itself, but who do they foul? Super Mario himself. Anyone who's watched much of Chalmers knows he's one of the most cold blooded players in the country but if that wasn't enough HE HAD JUST HIT ONE OF THE GREATEST SHOTS IN COLLEGE BASKETBALL HISTORY!!!!

I'd go as far to call this the worst coaching job I have ever seen in an NCAA Tournament game. And I'm really not doing this to discount what Kansas did because the Beakers stepped up to the plate just as much as Memphis tucked their tails between their legs and hid. But the fact remains, KU doesn't even get the opportunity to make those clutch plays if Memphis had even one player who was able to rise to the occasion and oh, I don't know, HIT A SINGLE FREAKIN' FREE THROW!

The most frustrating thing about this game for Mizzou fans is that after Armageddon at Arrowhead Tiger fans finally had a leg up on their most hated rivals and the only thing that could change that was if Kansas was able to win a National Championship. Now all a Jayhawk fan has to do when arguing about the rivalry is point to the rafters in Allen Fieldhouse. But the argument is still a lot more evenly matched than it was a few months ago. The closest we may ever come to a Mizzou/Kansas national title game was 11-24-07. It was unquestionably the biggest game in Border War history. 

So lets get a bully for Ol' Mizzou!!!

(And screw Kansas)

(And John Calipari)