Sports > KU Jayhawks > Jayhawks in the NCAA Tournament

  

Balance, togetherness and an uplifting spirit

BY RICK PLUMLEE

The Wichita Eagle

After one more news conference last Tuesday morning to discuss Kansas' national championship, Bill Self walked down the long hallway leading outside of San Antonio's Alamodome.

He was still chatting almost nonstop about the previous night's 75-68 overtime victory over Memphis.

Self abruptly stopped, leaned over and picked up a penny.

"I found one of these yesterday, too," he said. "Must be lucky."

No, probably just a penny.

You don't survive to the end without athleticism, skill, planning and clever coaching.

Then again, if you look at the full length of the ride that took the Jayhawks to the highest peak of college basketball, you would have to say they caught a few breaks.

Did they ever.

Who would have thought that Brandon Rush blowing out his right knee last May would bode well for the Jayhawks?

Or that Sherron Collins spraining his ankle in an early November game would help him avoid consequences of a more serious injury and, thus, be healthy when it counted most?

Or that a one-point loss in late February at Oklahoma State, a team that went on to lose in the first round of the NIT, would set the stage for a players-only meeting that would rally them for the stretch run?

Such are the things that help make up a champion.

"When you think about it," Self said, "it's pretty humbling."

Without Rush's injury, the junior guard probably stays in the NBA Draft and is gone.

If Collins doesn't sprain his left ankle, doctors don't find a stress fracture in his left foot until far later in the season. The surgery they performed in November probably would have come far too late for the explosive guard to recover in time to make an impact in the NCAA Tournament.

On Feb. 24, the day after losing at OSU, KU players gathered for lunch at Henry T's in Lawrence, ate hot wings and challenged each other. In the span of the past seven games, there had been three losses.

A 20-0 start not only was blown up with a loss at Kansas State, but the Jayhawks' historic 24-game winning streak in Manhattan was snapped. A second-half collapse resulted in a three-point loss at Texas. Then came the slip at OSU.

"We talked about bringing more energy to every game, every practice," senior Darnell Jackson said of the meeting. "A lot of guys realized, 'This is it. We have to bring it every game the rest of the way."'

The Jayhawks didn't lose another game. They closed with 13 straight victories, the final one coming on the biggest and brightest stage and played in a manner befitting a champion.

KU (37-3) set a school record for victories and led the nation in margin of victory (19.0 points). After sharing the regular-season Big 12 title with Texas, the Jayhawks defeated the Longhorns for the conference tournament championship.

That game in Kansas City should have given us all a hint of just how good the Jayhawks would be in the NCAA Tournament. A toe-to-toe matchup of two teams playing at a high level.

Sound familiar? KU repeated that kind of performance in beating Memphis, only on an even higher scale.

Yet, to watch this team throughout the season was to be lulled into thinking there was nothing special happening. Is balance boring? Is that what happens when a team has seven players averaging between 7.1 and 13.3 points?

Apparently. Not one Jayhawk was even named All-Big 12 because votes were so split between Rush, Jackson and Darrell Arthur.

Rush led KU with a 13.3 scoring average, the second-lowest average by the Jayhawks' top scorer in 34 years.

KU was clearly making it work with the whole being greater than its parts. And with better parts than even Self could have known in October.

Jackson broke out of his shell to emerge as a force during a long stretch of his senior season. Did someone give Sasha Kaun a hands transplant? Over the final six weeks, the senior center was looking, well, athletic.

No go-to guy on this team. That was a constant criticism. Point guard Russell Robinson said the "open guy is our go-to guy."

Fortunately for the Jayhawks, that usually meant Mario Chalmers. See the final four seconds of regulation in the national title game. Self proclaimed Chalmers' guarded three-pointer that sent the game into overtime "the biggest in Kansas' history."

The master pulling it all together was Self. His players say so.

"He was the biggest motivator I've ever been around," Arthur said. "When your spirits are low, he can just lift them back up with one little speech. He has that in him.

"He lifted us this whole season, the whole tournament."

Self will simply tell you, "Our time was right."

Balance, depth, experience. And these players actually enjoyed each other. All things that were missing at one time or another in Self's first four seasons at KU.

When KU escaped upstart Davidson in the Elite Eight 59-57 after Jason Richards' 25-footer thudded off the backboard at the buzzer, Self had finally cracked the Final Four.

"To reach the Final Four," Self said, "you have to find a way to win a game like that."

Davidson was the hump, the Elite Eight the barrier. Once it was scaled, Chalmers said, "We knew we'd win it all."

Not even Roy Williams could stand in their way. Next to Chalmers' shot in the title game, KU's 40-12 run to open its 84-66 victory over the Tar Heels in the national semifinals will surely rank at the top of the highlights.

"We just believed," Jackson said.

And that has nothing to do with luck.

Rick Plumlee covered his s University of Kansas sports. He can be reached at 268-6278.