Rock Chalk Jayhawk pardners!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Welcome to Big McKinney Blog
Welcome to our cool little blog spot, where McKinney's and McKinney loved ones, friends, fans, colleagues, critics and sworn blood enemies gather to opine on weighty matters of the day (that is, stuff important to us). There is lots more to come at this spot so bookmark it and drop in anytime. And most important: POST
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5 comments:
I'm hoping to win that $12 gc to amazon....so I'll be posting some pictures from Orlando soon. We are glad to be back....theme parks have a way of wearing you down
Monica
Okay, I can't figure out how to post these photos to the actual blog page just yet but here are two links to some new photos at Picassa....enjoy....and let me know if you viewed them.
Monica
http://picasaweb.google.com/mcarsonnyc/Orlando408
http://picasaweb.google.com/mcarsonnyc/James8thBirthday08
This is pretty cool!
^ jeese, he sure is buckin for that gc.
The crown fits Bill Self, Mario Chalmers and the rest of the Jayhawks
Tuesday, April 8th 2008, 4:00 AM
by Mike Lupica
SAN ANTONIO - Bill Self, the Kansas coach, was being interviewed for television now on the floor of the Alamodome, but nobody was paying much attention to Self, they were watching the huge screens in the high corners of the place, watching Mario Chalmers make one of those shots that kids sometimes make in moments like this, one of those shots they talk about forever when college basketball has made its way to another Monday night. Michael Jordan made this kind of shot once to beat Georgetown and Keith Smart made one for Indiana to beat Syracuse in 1987 in New Orleans and now here was a replay of Mario Chalmers' shot against Memphis coming down out of the top of the Alamodome like a safe being dropped on the Memphis Tigers.
This was only a shot to tie against Memphis, a shot that only meant Kansas had come all the way back from being down nine points with 2:12 left and earned the right to keep playing at the Alamodome. But everybody who saw Chalmers knock this one down knew that Memphis wasn't coming back even if Kansas had.
So there, one more time, the first of all the times Mario Chalmers' shot will be replayed from now on in college basketball, there he was, coming from his left, nearly losing control of the ball, but holding on to it, because there are times when the ball doesn't bounce away from you in a moment like this, because it is supposed to be in your hands.
There, one more time on the big screens, was Chalmers putting up this high shot, like maybe he thought he had to bank it off the ceiling. And as the ball came down you could see the clock running down at the same time, the shot clock above the basket showing you there were less than three seconds left. Then the ball was through the net and there was :2.1 left and the championship game was Kansas 63, Memphis 63. It was one of those Monday nights now in college basketball.
"Ten seconds to go and we think we're national champions," Memphis coach John Calipari would say. "Then a kid makes a shot and all of a sudden we're not."
And not going to be.
Even though there were five minutes to play, you knew Memphis was done, done in by Mario Chalmers, done in by the bad free throw shooting that everybody said was going to catch up with Calipari's players before this tournament ended and caught up with them with just over a minute left in regulation, done in because they didn't foul before Chalmers even got his chance.
There were four missed free throws in the last 75 seconds, three from Chris Douglas-Roberts, one from Derrick Rose with 10.8 seconds left, and any one of them has Memphis cutting down the nets at the Alamodome. But Douglas-Roberts missed the front end of a one-and-one and Memphis' lead stayed at 62-58. Darrell Arthur made this little jumper from the left corner and got a shooter's roll and now with exactly a minute left in the championship game, Kansas had scratched its way back to 62-60.
They lost all but four points of a 28-point lead against Carolina in the semifinals on Saturday, somehow stood in there with both character and talent after that, came back in that game even though they were still ahead, and beat Carolina going away in the end.
Now they were about to do that to Memphis, only nobody knew that yet inside the Alamodome.
Kansas fouled Douglas-Roberts with :16.8 left. Now he was shooting two. He missed them both, but Memphis got the offensive rebound on the second. Derrick Rose's turn after that, with :10.8 left. The freshman was the one who had changed the game, seemingly for good, for Memphis, in this wonderful run when he scored 13 of his team's 15 points and put the Tigers up 56-49. If he makes two here, the game is over, no matter what Chalmers or anybody else does for Kansas.
The kid from Chicago, maybe the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, playing in the one Monday night of college basketball he is likely to ever see, missed the first and made the second.
It was 63-60. And Kansas was still alive. And Memphis was no lock anymore to walk away from this game 39-1 and the champs.
The ball ended up in Chalmers' hands. Rose would say he thought he nearly got a piece of it. But didn't. Chalmers put it over everybody, put it way up there with all this soft shooter's touch. The Jordan shot. The Keith Smart shot on Monday night. The shot that Michael Lee of Kansas had to tie five years ago in New Orleans before Hakim Warrick came all the way from the Olde Absinthe House to block Lee's shot and win the title for Syracuse.
So Kansas had gone 13-3 down the stretch. So Kansas finally made it 19-3 into the overtime before Douglas-Roberts knocked down two free throws with 2:24 left. Too late. Much too late for Memphis Tigers. From the time they had that 60-51 lead, they would make just one basket over the last 7:12 of their season, a three-pointer from Douglas-Roberts with 56 seconds left in the overtime.
They will remember those four free throws forever in Memphis the way they will remember Mario Chalmers (18 points) forever in Lawrence, Kan., and everywhere in Kansas where Kansas basketball feels like the Yankees in New York.
"I just dropped to my knees," Memphis' Joey Dorsey, who was on the bench at the time having fouled out, said when asked about Chalmers. "Just dropped to my knees. I was like, man, I can't believe he made that shot 'cause we were ready to cut the nets down."
Memphis' Tigers had Kansas with two minutes to go. Then they couldn't make free throws. Even with that, 10 seconds to go, they were still national champions. Then they weren't. Kid made a shot.
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