SAN ANTONIO – At the start of the day, the Ala modome was filled with the unyielding din of the throatiest fans in college basketball, a blue-clad wave of Memphis Tigers fans threatening to blow the roof clear off, toppling it onto the River Walk.
By the end, it reverberated with the spookiest cheer in college sports, as the citizen supporters of the Kansas Jayhawks stood and cleared their throats did their eeriest rendition of “Rock . . . Chalk . . . Jay . . . Hawk . . . K . . . U.”
Tomorrow, they will collide. The Final Four’s two most rowdy, most rabid fan bases, satisfied in the knowledge that the rest of America may have wanted a marquee pairing of UCLA and North Carolina, the bluest blue bloods in the sport (one of them sky blue, the other powder), it was going to have to settle for Memphis and Kansas.
Which, if yesterday is any indication, won’t mean settling all that much at all. Because at their best – and both teams, across varying stretches of their games, were very much at their best – these are the most entertaining teams in the whole sport.
By the close of business tomorrow, one of them will also be the best.
“The reality of it,” Memphis coach John Calipari said after his team’s 78-63 vanquishing of UCLA, “I’ve got a good team. Got a good team of players that play together, take care of the ball rebound.”
He smiled that recognizable, cocksure Calipari smile.
“Got a good team,” he said.
But so do the Jayhawks, who smeared Carolina 84-66. They may have been the biggest afterthought of this Alamodome gathering, the lower of the four No. 1 seeds who made it this far. A week ago, they had 98 percent of the country rooting against them because they stood in the way of the Davidson Feel-Goods, and they barely managed to escape that trap. Of all four teams, the least was expected of them.
Yet across the first 15 minutes of their game with North Carolina, they looked about as good as a team can look on this grand a stage. They rattled off a staggering 25-2 run that vaulted them to a 40-12 lead and sent Kansas faithful into a dizzying tizzy of fury, much of it aimed at old friend Ol’ Roy Williams, who stubbornly refused to call a timeout until his team was in a 26-point hole.
Of course, Carolina being Carolina, they erased all but four points of that deficit, and with just over 8 minutes to play a 3-pointer by Danny Green went two-thirds of the way down before somehow spinning out, which would have made it a two-point game.
“That was three different games tonight,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, who a week ago was still saddled with the rap of being unable to win the big one, and now sits a day away from coaching in the Biggest One of all. “The first 15 minutes was as good as any team can play. The second game, not very good. And the we played super down the stretch.”
“It was a fun game to play in,” said Brandon Rush, who led Kansas with 25 points and seven rebounds. “And a great game to win. We played as well as we can play in long stretches tonight.”
They’ll need more of that tomorrow, because after surviving a second-round scare against Mississippi State, the Tigers have played at an extraordinary level. They outran, outgunned, outclassed and outcoached UCLA, much to their own vindication. And they did their best to show off Derrick Rose, their freshman point guard, who is all but daring the Heat, the Knicks or whoever wins the No. 1 slot in the NBA lottery to bypass him in favor of Michael Beasley.
“Every once in a while,” Calipari marveled about his precocious star, “I just go, ‘Oh, my God,’ and I kind of sit down.”
It was that kind of day yesterday. The final scores tell you there wasn’t a lot of compelling basketball at the Alamodome, but the final scores lie. If you watched the way Memphis roared and Kansas soared, you understand one thing with perfect clarity: you can’t expect a photo finish today. But you can expect a hell of a lot of fun.