I feel really guilty right now.
You see, my team, the Kansas Jayhawks, just won a Final Four game by 18 points.
But after thoroughly enjoying every second of the first fifteen minutes, the rest of the game wasn't a whole lotta fun. As the Tar Heels slowly chipped away at our 28 point advantage, I watched the game merely hoping it would end, attempting to will the seconds off the clock faster. And so, when they finally caught up enough to make it a 54-50 game (that would be a 38-14 run for the Heels), I was freaking out, along with the vast majority of the Kansas fan base. Of course, from that point forwards we outplayed the Heels enough to win by a comfortable 18 points.
Which leads me to say without a moment of hesitation: That was the least-fun 18 point win in the history of the Final Four. 15 consecutive brain-dead minutes will do that, but the good obviously outweighed the bad.
And so, before we get into the Memphis State discussion (after seeing Ben Howland and Bobby Knight call them Memphis State, I couldn't help myself), enjoy the win some more. We are in the National Championship game, forty minutes away from being the kings of the college basketball universe. The nearly unanimous pick this week of UNC-UCLA has been blown up, both of the proverbial 'favorites' (Memphis was the Vegas favorite, but not the MSM favorite by a longshot) proving that they are worse than Kansas and Memphis State, respectively.
Bring on the Tigers...
ROCK CHALK!
Editor's Note: If you want to know the kind of offense Memphis runs and all that, this article is an absolute must-read. It was in SI a month-or-so ago, and while it doesn't exclusively focus on the Memphis Tigers offense, that is the core subject of the article. In order for us to stop it, we will need outstanding defensive performances from multiple people, namely the two guards that are forced to guard Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, which I would guess is Mario and Brandon, respectively, right now. I wonder if we still switch, in the rare occasions that the Tigers actually use a ball-screen, or just stick to your man. That is a crucial decision in Monday's game, and a decision we will talk about more in-depth a little later on before game time.