Watch­ing the game last night, there were a lot of non-game related things I wanted to touch on.  This might be of more inter­est to those of you who haven’t been fol­low­ing KU bas­ket­ball all season.

• God.  In all the player inter­views before the game, dur­ing all the plays of the game, dur­ing all the cel­e­bra­tion after­wards, in all the arti­cles about the game, and even in what I saw of the post-game pressers, God was men­tioned three times.  Just three times.  I find that sur­pris­ingly low.

Mario Chalmers pointed to the sky a lit­tle while after his game-tying three point shot.  This is the clas­sic, “Thank you, God” ges­ture used in sports all over.  Or maybe he was point­ing to the Jumbotron.

Ron­nie Chalmers, Mario’s Dad, car­ried a lit­tle bit of scrip­ture in his pocket ((Source: Luke Winn’s ESPN Tour­ney Blog, about halfway down the arti­cle)), and read it to him­self qui­etly towards the end of regulation.

Cali­pari, the head coach of Mem­phis, told a reporter right after­wards that he told God, dur­ing Der­rick Rose’s one-of-two final free throw appear­ance, that if they both went in, it was meant to be, and if they didn’t, it was not meant to be.

We watched the game at home, live (not delayed via TiVo), as it tipped late enough that we were done with all par­ent­ing duties.  Our boys were tucked safely in their beds, dreams of Jay­hawks danc­ing through their heads.  They both wore their new KU shirts to school, and the lit­tlest one (he’s 22 months old) insisted on show­ing every­one his “J Awk,” even if that meant tak­ing his hoodie off repeatedly.

We were hop­ing to watch in HD and lis­ten to the local guys on the radio, but when we started the game, the video was behind the audio by almost five sec­onds.  That means the “shot was good!” before the play had even been set up on screen.  Some­thing hap­pened at half time though, and it was all synced up, so we got local color for the sec­ond half and the over­time.  The local announc­ers are so delight­fully biased (and I still believe Packer and Nance were entranced by the idea of Mem­phis) that it makes up for their being fur­ther from the floor/booth stats.

Watch­ing this game was awe­some.  It was just the two of us, Sweetie and I, but we were up and down, ner­vous, groan­ing, I know I cursed at the screen repeat­edly, Sweetie was tense, lit­er­ally on the edge of her seat.  We could hardly believe it when Chalmers’ shot went in, and when it was all over we rushed out­side to hear the scream­ing and honk­ing and fire­works from downtown.

Then we watched it over again (thanks to TiVo) with the TV audio, just to see it once more.

Here are my thoughts on the game.  Please note, you may have to know some­thing about bas­ket­ball, col­lege bas­ket­ball, and/or KU bas­ket­ball to grok much of this. Sorry.

• Here in Lawrence they are call­ing it “Mario and the Mir­a­cle,” a ref­er­ence to KU’s last cham­pi­onship team, dubbed “Danny and the Mir­a­cles” after Danny Man­ning (now a KU assis­tant coach).  But I much pre­fer the sim­pler, more apt, “Super Mario.”  In my two pal­try years in Lawrence, I’ve seen Mario Chalmers take a clutch shot like that a num­ber of times.  And not one arti­cle before the game, not a sin­gle one from the National Media, sin­gled him out as any­thing other than part of a guard foursome.
• All sea­son, Hell, all of his two years, Dar­rell Arthur has been hailed as this great, ath­letic, won­der boy.  All of his two years I have failed to see it.  Some games he has been good, even great.  Most games he lets balls slip through his fin­gers, he fouls a lot, he con­tributes a few points.  But this game he was excel­lent.  20 points and 10 rebounds, and a cool hand from start to fin­ish.  His poten­tial is so high that he’ll prob­a­bly jump to the NBA, but this was an excel­lent part­ing performance.
• Sher­ron Collins, instru­men­tal in the game, is a player I love and hate.  I cussed him up and down the floor both in this game and the Car­olina game on Sat­ur­day.  He is mad­den­ingly bull­headed, but mad-skilled, and for every time he dri­ves the lane against four guys and loses the ball, or passes to nobody, or drib­bles it off a teammate’s foot, there are those times he strips the ball, weaves the trees for a score, or drains a  three at the cru­cial time.  One more year in school and he will be some­thing to see.
• How impor­tant was the review of that three-pointer?  If the offi­cials didn’t have the abil­ity to go back and exam­ine that play, KU loses and the game gets a huge aster­isk (at least, here in Lawrence).
• Only one ana­lyst gave KU the nod before the game.  Jay Bilas, of ESPN, has been pick­ing KU since Octo­ber.  Every time he was asked about it dur­ing the tour­na­ment, he reaf­firmed his pick.  Right before the game, he said it again, though he hedged his bet a lit­tle.  Hats off to him.
• They are call­ing this team the best team KU has ever pro­duced, and they are call­ing KU “Basketball’s most sto­ried pro­gram.”  That makes this the best team ever from basketball’s most sto­ried pro­gram, in case you were wondering.

This may have been the most fun I have ever had watch­ing sports, right up there with Argentina’s win in the World Cup Final in 1986.