It’s always fun to watch your favorite college basketball team smack your arch-nemesis in the face for 26 minutes of a game. The other 14 minutes were not nearly as fun. But I thought that what Bill Self told his team toward the tail-end of Carolina’s run was just great coaching:

“Hey, if I told you before the game we were going to be up nine with 10 minutes left, would we have taken that? If I told you we’d be up four at the under-eight timeout, would you have taken that?”

Perspective. That’s all it took for the Jayhawks to snap out of their funk and finish the job they’d started at the beginning of the game. The Roy demons are exorcised. Maybe we can lay that bad blood to rest and begin to honor a man who spent 15 years making Kansas a perennial contender in college basketball instead of booing him when he’s announced before games.

Tonight’s final is going to be a terrific game. Memphis has some terrific players, but Kansas is a better team. If Kansas can play as good as they did for 2/3 of the game on Saturday, I think we’ll see crimson and blue streamers tonight. If their defensive intensity remains high, I believe they’ll succeed. If not, Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts will play their game. Those two players are the only ones who present significant match-up problems for the Jayhawks.

And don’t give me that Joey Dorsey stuff. KU is just too deep at the post for him to be nearly as effective as he was against the Kevin Love Show. Love isn’t tough and he refused to contest Dorsey underneath. We’ll call him “Darrell Arthur”. But KU has Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun and Cole Aldrich who will be more than enough to combat Dorsey underneath.

I imagine that the Jayhawk fan in me is starting to cloud my vision a little, but I think KU is the toughest match-up Memphis will have faced up to this point. Two great teams will clash tonight and I am hoping for that celebration in Lawrence.

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK!!!