SAN ANTONIO (AP) - What Roy Williams needed was a comeback for
the ages. What he got was a disappointing dose of payback - a
chance to see what it feels like when Kansas breaks his heart.
The Jayhawks left their old coach in the dust Saturday night,
getting 25 points and seven rebounds from Brandon Rush to stave off
a ferocious comeback by North Carolina for an 84-66 victory in the
national semifinals.
Trailing 40-12 late in the first half, Tyler Hansbrough, Wayne
Ellington and the Tar Heels made a valiant rally, getting to within
five points with nine minutes left, but ran out of steam in their
effort to pull off the biggest Final Four comeback ever.
"I've never been so embarrassed in my life," said Tar Heel
guard Marcus Ginyard.
Now, the Jayhawks will play Memphis, an earlier 78-63 winner
over UCLA, in Monday's title game.
Kansas moved within a win of its first national championship
since 1988, the year before Williams began his storied 15-year
tenure in Lawrence - one that ended when he jilted Kansas for his
alma mater.
Hansbrough had 17 points and nine rebounds for North Carolina
(36-3) - a typically gutsy effort - but his next move will be to
decide whether to come back for his senior season.
Kansas has more pressing things to deal with.
"We know we've got another step to take Monday night," Sherron
Collins said. "It's going to be a great matchup. They play fast,
we play fast."
Collins had two assists, a 3-pointer and a pair of free throws
during the decisive stretch that saw the Jayhawks (36-3) pad that
five-point lead back to 15 and send the Tar Heels into true
desperation mode.
Williams stood stoically as the clock ticked down, arms folded,
nothing much left he could do. Tears usually come pretty quickly
after the final buzzer of the season for him, and this season ended
one game short of where many thought it might.
"We've had a good year, but I don't think anybody's goal here
was to be one of the top four teams in the country," Hansbrough
said. "It's to be the top team. I'm frustrated with that."
Williams got outcoached in this one, especially at the
beginning, finding no solution for Kansas' somewhat surprising
strategy of dumping the ball inside to Darrell Arthur, Darnell
Jackson and Cole Aldrich.
Despite the impressive comeback, the final stats painted a
picture of Kansas domination. The Jayhawks shot 53 percent from the
floor and held the nation's second-leading offense to 35 percent.
They had nine more rebounds, 10 more assists, six more blocks.
All that may have helped prove Williams' theory, as he tried to
deflect all the talk of himself this week: That the game would be
decided by the players.
The Jayhawks were simply better.
"We played great early," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "I
mean, that's as good as we could play."
It was Self who replaced Williams after the coach famously
bolted for North Carolina, and this was the first chance to see
them go against each other with their new teams - and on the game's
biggest stage.
Self coached Kansas to the lead. Williams coaxed his team back
in it.
But for all North Carolina's effort, this game was lost early.
The basket looked as big as the Alamo for the Jayhawks, who made
12 of their first 16 shots and went on an 18-0 run for a 33-10 lead
with 9:31 left.
Meanwhile, the Tar Heels went a stunning 9:03 without a basket.
No team has overcome a deficit bigger than 22 at the Final Four,
and it was around the time the lead was 40-12 that none other than
Billy Packer, the CBS analyst, said the game was over.
Not so fast.
Carolina turned this into controlled chaos over the first 10
minutes of the second half, altering Kansas shots and making pretty
much everything they threw up - including a 3-pointer by Ellington
(18 points) with 9:20 left that made it 58-53 and had the Tar Heel
fans in a frenzy.
Throughout the rally, Self called time-out after time-out - KU
fans often criticized Williams for not doing the same under similar
circumstances - and eventually, North Carolina cooled and Kansas
ran away.
Picking a Jayhawks star was as easy as closing your eyes and
pointing to a name on the stat sheet.
Aldrich stood out, swatting three shots in the first half and
altering more after coming off the bench en route to his
eight-point, seven-rebound night. His highlight came after KU
missed just its fifth shot of the game, more than 10 minutes into
the first half, and he outgrappled Hansbrough for a rebound that
resulted in two free throws. That made it 33-10.
Arthur had three buckets and an assist in the first five minutes
to start the runaway. Russell Robinson had five points, four
assists, three steals and three turnovers over the first 20 minutes
- what coach wouldn't love that?
The list went on, and die-hard KU fans might have deemed it
their team's best moment since the 2003 Final Four, when Nick
Collison helped dismantle Marquette 94-61 in the semifinals.
Two nights later, the Jayhawks lost to Syracuse in the finals.
With talk swirling that Williams would be headed to Tobacco Road,
he said on live TV that he "could give a (bleep) about North
Carolina right now."
Two weeks later, he was wearing Carolina blue.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
