Free-throw line trips Tigers mere inches away from their prize

SAN ANTONIO - Memphis coach John Calipari had been insisting for weeks that his team's shaky free-throw shooting would not figure negatively in the Tigers' quest for the national championship. On Monday night, in the last of his team's 40 games and with the title on the line, Calipari was proven wrong.

The Tigers missed four of five free throws in the final 75 seconds of regulation, enabling Kansas to reach overtime on Mario Chalmers' three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left.

Chalmers' hurried but pure bomb set off an explosion of noise from the Jayhawk masses occupying most of the Alamodome.

Kansas was on fire. Memphis was rattled from losing a nine-point lead with 2:12 remaining.

Kansas scored the first six of OT and was home free from there, gaining a 75-68 victory that was its second consecutive upset in this Final Four.

The Jayhawks had jumped on North Carolina, the nation's No. 1-rated team, for a 40-12 lead on Saturday night and wound up with an 84-66 victory.

That was a revenge game for the Kansas fans angered when coach Roy Williams left the Jayhawks for Carolina five years ago. That came immediately after Kansas lost to Syracuse in the title game.

Bill Self is receiving the offer of a huge bribe from billionaire T. Boone Pickens to return to his alma mater at Oklahoma State. Reportedly, the offer starts with a $6 million signing bonus and includes a salary of $3.5 million (or more) annually.

Lew Perkins, the Kansas athletic director, has admitted there's no way he can match that offer financially, meaning Self will have to choose a merely lucrative extension to stay in Lawrence, Kan. over the richest contract in college basketball history to move to Stillwater, Okla.

Self was grateful for what he had -- a championship at the end of his first Final Four -- on Monday night. He was also grateful for an official's review that changed a three-pointer by Memphis freshman Derrick Rose to a two.

The Tigers were at the end of a shot clock when Rose fired a jumper from the left side. The official on sight thrust his arms upward, signaling a three, and the scoreboard read 57-49.

Twenty-five seconds later, there was a TV timeout, the officials checked and decided it was a two. That lowered the Kansas deficit by one -- a fact that came in very handy when Chalmers fired his magnificent, on-the-hustle three to gain overtime.

Chalmers is the cousin of Lionel Chalmers, a former Xavier star who was with the Timberwolves for a time in training camp. And he's a cousin to Chris Smith, who played some for the Wolves in the early 1990s.

He comes from Anchorage, Alaska. Seriously. He was born there. He played basketball at Anchorage Bartlett, for his father, Ronnie. Mario Chalmers came to Kansas in 2005, and that's the same year his father was named director of basketball operations at Kansas.

Twenty years ago, Danny Manning led Kansas to a national championship upset of Oklahoma. There was much suspicion that Manning, a high school legend in North Carolina, came as part of a package deal. His father, Ed, was added to Larry Brown's coaching staff.

There were no such alarms when a 6-1 guard from Alaska showed up in Lawrence along with his father. But now, a son coming to town with his father has worked as well for Self as it did for Brown.

"Sherron [Collins] fumbled the ball and I came up behind him and they got me the ball," Chalmers said. "I had a good look."

"Then, I saw that Ed Hightower was refereeing, and Ed was a referee in the '88 title game," Self said. "I know that didn't have anything to do with it, but when I saw Ed, I thought, 'The stars just might be aligned for us.' "

The real alignment that made the night was Chalmers' on that end-of-regulation shot. Did you really think it was going in?

"Yes, I did," he said. "It felt good out of my hand."