What a game it was last night. This game was a back and forth battle all the way to the final buzzer. Memphis was obviously the heavy favorite, but in the end Kansas was the stronger team. The final score was 75-68 in favor of Kansas, and was decided in overtime. This marks the first championship title for Kansas since 1988, with Danny Manning leading the way. Exactly 20 years ago…….weird.
This game could have easily be won by Memphis, but their Achilles Heel came into play. They STRUGGLE from the line, and have never been able to overcome that. In the tournament free throws win games or lose games. In this case they lost the game for Memphis. Chris Douglas-Roberts missed CRUCIAL free throws that would have put Memphis up by 4 with about 15 seconds left. Then Derrick Rose missed one of two and gave the Tigers a meager 3 point lead with 10 seconds left. Plenty of time for a 3 point shot. Enter Mario Chalmers. He got the ball on the right side of the floor, took one dribble left, pulled up and DRAINED the shot. Tie ball game, welcome to overtime.
Overtime was another story. It was all Kansas. One thing that I couldn’t understand is why the Tigers gave up after regulation. Understandably they realized they just blew the National Championship, but still, you have 5 more mins to play. Chalmers finished with 18 points, but the Jayhawks were lead by another starter, Darrell Arthur with 20. Chalmers’ last second shot may just go down in Kansas history as one of the greatest shots EVER. Rose and Douglas-Roberts combined for 40 points, but it just wasn’t enough in the end. The deciding factor: Kansas 14-15 from the stripe, Memphis was only 12-19. Better work on that in the off-season.
Interesting note: I put together an annual March Madness Pool. This year was very interesting in that all four #1 seeds made it to the Final Four. Only 1 person in my pool had all four #1 in the final Four. Even crazier is that EVERY SINGLE PERSON had North Carolina playing UCLA for the Championship. Some had UCLA winning and others had UNC winning. So the long and short of it is that no one got any points for the last 2 rounds.
Copyright 2008 – E. Mendez
