By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH The Kansas City Star
Memphis guard Chris Douglas-Roberts (left) and Kansas guard Sherron Collins both attack the basket in their team?s offenses ? even though the Tigers and Jayhawks do it in different ways. KU uses lots of ball screens, and Memphis relies on its dribble-drive motion offense.
NCAA Men's Tournament bracket
KU fans confident about Jayhawks
KU poster page: Un-four-gettable
KU will try to finish for itself and for the Big 12
Year of the Jayhawk: KU has been school for all seasons
Former high school roommates Rush and Taggart meet on college basketball?s biggest stage
San Antonio Buzz: No rush decision for KU?s Rush
Nipping Rose will be KU senior Robinson?s job
Calipari not afraid to take a chance on kids
MEMPHIS TIGERS ROSTER AND STATISTICS
MEMPHIS TIGERS SCHEDULE
Tennessees Pearl says you have to make Memphis beat you from the perimeter
Calipari resurrects coaching career at Memphis
Get ready for alley-oop game between KU and Memphis
Memphis Douglas-Roberts getting plenty of ink for his play and on his skin
KANSAS JAYHAWKS SCHEDULE
NCAA Tournament final: Memphis vs. Kansas
KANSAS JAYHAWKS ROSTER STATISTICS
Former Kansas great Danny Manning selected for National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame
Kansas football and basketball history
The ghosts of '88 haunt KU
SAN ANTONIO | Darnell Jackson should never be awestruck by another athlete. He?s 6 feet, 8 inches tall. He weighs 250 pounds and is one of Kansas? highest fliers.
But one day before the national championship game between KU and Memphis, Jackson sounded more like a spectator sitting in row 50 with a bag of popcorn.
?Sometimes,? Jackson said, ?I do catch myself being a fan. There are a lot of great players out there. CDR (Chris Douglas-Roberts), Brandon Rush, Derrick Rose, Mario Chalmers, it?s just back and forth. They?re going to be unbelievable.?
Finally, it?s the players? turn. The coaching story lines have vanished. KU coach Bill Self made his Final Four. The Jayhawks buried former coach Roy Williams and his Tar Heels. It?s not about the coaches, about the angry fans, about the past.
Tonight, it?s about the guys on the floor.
Get ready for the show.
There couldn?t be two teams that deserve a captive audience more than Memphis and Kansas. The Tigers, 38-1, and Jayhawks, 36-3, have been steamrolling toward this night since the beginning of the season. In late January, a meeting in April looked inevitable. Memphis was ranked No. 1, and KU No. 2. It?s no coincidence that the last two undefeated teams ? neither school had lost until KU fell to Kansas State on Jan. 30 ? are now the last ones standing.
Memphis senior Joey Dorsey remembers a night earlier this season when the Tigers gathered at coach John Calipari?s house. They turned on the tube and saw the future right in front of them.
?Kansas was playing,? Dorsey said. ?(Calipari) was like, ?They play just like us. They?re very long and athletic, and the style they play, they get up and down.? We always had it in our heads that we were going to play against Kansas.?
???
The talk of the day Sunday was the similarities between the two teams. No doubt, Calipari?s and Self?s programs have been built with NBA talent, and it starts with finding ways to recruit the nation?s top players to the middle of the country.
Some may think Self has it pretty easy. He can sell Kansas? tradition and history. He can sell those banners in Allen Fieldhouse and the fact that the program hasn?t missed out on an NCAA Tournament ? not including the year it was on probation in 1989 ? since 1983.
?There?s so much to sell,? Self said. ?First thing I?ll tell them, ?Do you know who Dr. Naismith is?? ?Of course, I do.? ?You know who the first coach at Kansas was?? ?No.? And you explain that.
?But Kansas is a great place because until you visit it, you can?t feel it. People that haven?t been there don?t get it because it is different.?
Still, if a kid from the East or West Coast doesn?t visit Lawrence, it?s hard to convince him to spend four years in the Heartland.
Calipari had it even tougher at Memphis. The program had traditionally recruited the city of Memphis and not much else. Calipari knew that wasn?t going to be enough.
?I just felt that if you want to be a national program,? Calipari said, ?you have to recruit nationally. I?ve always said I?d like to have a team of five to six Memphis kids, and then five to six kids from around the country. It?s gotten a little less than thatNext page >
Memphis guard Chris Douglas-Roberts (left) and Kansas guard Sherron Collins both attack the basket in their team?s offenses ? even though the Tigers and Jayhawks do it in different ways. KU uses lots of ball screens, and Memphis relies on its dribble-drive motion offense.
NCAA Men's Tournament bracket
KU fans confident about Jayhawks
KU poster page: Un-four-gettable
KU will try to finish for itself and for the Big 12
Year of the Jayhawk: KU has been school for all seasons
Former high school roommates Rush and Taggart meet on college basketball?s biggest stage
San Antonio Buzz: No rush decision for KU?s Rush
Nipping Rose will be KU senior Robinson?s job
Calipari not afraid to take a chance on kids
MEMPHIS TIGERS ROSTER AND STATISTICS
MEMPHIS TIGERS SCHEDULE
Tennessees Pearl says you have to make Memphis beat you from the perimeter
Calipari resurrects coaching career at Memphis
Get ready for alley-oop game between KU and Memphis
Memphis Douglas-Roberts getting plenty of ink for his play and on his skin
KANSAS JAYHAWKS SCHEDULE
NCAA Tournament final: Memphis vs. Kansas
KANSAS JAYHAWKS ROSTER STATISTICS
Former Kansas great Danny Manning selected for National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame
Kansas football and basketball history
The ghosts of '88 haunt KU
Calipari has had to be creative. He?s gotten six of his players from North Carolina prep schools. He used a relationship with William Wesley ? a well-known associate of many NBA players ? to lure Rose to campus for a visit.
?This stuff on recruiting is all about relationships,? Calipari said. ?I have a lot of relationships. That?s why I?ve been able to recruit pretty good players.?
Eventually, the teams started to shape up. Kansas began to round into its current form when Self landed a class of three McDonald?s All-Americans ? Chalmers, Micah Downs and Julian Wright ? and Brandon Rush. Self followed that up by luring a Chicago kid, Sherron Collins, and a Dallas kid, Darrell Arthur, to Lawrence.
Calipari convinced Douglas-Roberts to leave Detroit and come to Memphis, and Rose?s signing sealed the deal for this season. The Tigers were going to be a contender.
With all of this talent to play with, Self and Calipari both tweaked their offensive systems. It was time to let the boys play.
???
Douglas-Roberts seems to think that if he held a mirror up to his Memphis team, the Jayhawks may be staring back at him.
?There are a lot of similarities,? Douglas-Roberts said. ?Both teams like to dribble-drive, and both teams like to create off the dribble, and that?s very hard to guard. When you have people who can finish like Rush, Collins and Chalmers, it?s very hard. And I see why the coach tells them to play like that.?
Calipari?s Tigers play the dribble-drive motion offense that Calipari stumbled onto a few years back when a junior-college coach came to one of his practices.
Vance Walberg, a coach at Fresno (Calif.) City College at the time, was at dinner with Calipari when Calipari asked him what offense Walberg?s team ran.
?You don?t want to see it, because you won?t do it,? Walberg told him.
?No,? Calipari said, ?I want to see it.?
So Walberg showed him the offense. Calipari, a disciple of Larry Brown who could trace his roots all the way back to Dean Smith and Phog Allen, had always been a traditionalist on offense. But he loved the spacing of Walberg?s system. Calipari didn?t have the players yet to fit the system, but he?d work it in slowly until he had them.
?When I had a team full of these guys,? Calipari said, ?I said, ?You know what? I want to go fully with it.? I just think these guys feel unleashed. Every one of them knows that they have the ability to take the ball to the basket.?
The dribble-drive allows Memphis to spread the floor with four players on the perimeter. It forces the opposing team to keep Memphis? guards out of the lane, which has been just about impossible this season.
But the Tigers aren?t the only ones who have changed it up to match their talent. Self has been fine-tuning his offense, which used to be the high-low, to fit his current collection of players, too.
?We just kept tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, trying to find modes off of ball screens that, if they played us this way, this is how we would attack,? Self said. ?Sometimes, it looks good. Sometimes, it doesn?t. But I think we have a nice blend right now because the better athletes you get, you want them to be able to use their athletic ability to get in the paint. The hardest thing in my opinion is to guard the ball.?
???
Dorsey was asked whether Kansas-Memphis was going to look like an NBA game.
?A pickup game,? he said, smiling.
Yes, this will be a show. Memphis loves to run, and the Tigers are even fun to watch in the half court. Kansas proved against North Carolina that it can run with anybody, too. Both teams certainly have the horses.
?It?s hard stopping that,? Memphis guard Antonio Anderson said. ?We know we gotta get back, they know they gotta get back. It?s going to be a track meet.?
So how will KU defend the Tigers? Will the Jayhawks play the dreaded zone defense, or will they stick to man-to-man, their bread and butter?
It?s just one more subplot to watch for the millions of fans at home and the 44,000 at the Alamodome. Oh, and don?t forget Darnell Jackson.
?When (tonight) gets here,? Jackson said, ?and the lights are on, and the ball goes up in the air, there?s going to be two great teams fighting for a national championship. Guys are going to give all of their mind, their body and their soul to try and win this national championship and bring it back to their program.?
Memphis guard Chris Douglas-Roberts (left) and Kansas guard Sherron Collins both attack the basket in their team?s offenses ? even though the Tigers and Jayhawks do it in different ways. KU uses lots of ball screens, and Memphis relies on its dribble-drive motion offense.
NCAA Men's Tournament bracket
KU fans confident about Jayhawks
KU poster page: Un-four-gettable
KU will try to finish for itself and for the Big 12
Year of the Jayhawk: KU has been school for all seasons
Former high school roommates Rush and Taggart meet on college basketball?s biggest stage
San Antonio Buzz: No rush decision for KU?s Rush
Nipping Rose will be KU senior Robinson?s job
Calipari not afraid to take a chance on kids
MEMPHIS TIGERS ROSTER AND STATISTICS
MEMPHIS TIGERS SCHEDULE
Tennessees Pearl says you have to make Memphis beat you from the perimeter
Calipari resurrects coaching career at Memphis
Get ready for alley-oop game between KU and Memphis
Memphis Douglas-Roberts getting plenty of ink for his play and on his skin
KANSAS JAYHAWKS SCHEDULE
NCAA Tournament final: Memphis vs. Kansas
KANSAS JAYHAWKS ROSTER STATISTICS
Former Kansas great Danny Manning selected for National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame
Kansas football and basketball history
The ghosts of '88 haunt KU
SAN ANTONIO | Darnell Jackson should never be awestruck by another athlete. He?s 6 feet, 8 inches tall. He weighs 250 pounds and is one of Kansas? highest fliers.
But one day before the national championship game between KU and Memphis, Jackson sounded more like a spectator sitting in row 50 with a bag of popcorn.
?Sometimes,? Jackson said, ?I do catch myself being a fan. There are a lot of great players out there. CDR (Chris Douglas-Roberts), Brandon Rush, Derrick Rose, Mario Chalmers, it?s just back and forth. They?re going to be unbelievable.?
Finally, it?s the players? turn. The coaching story lines have vanished. KU coach Bill Self made his Final Four. The Jayhawks buried former coach Roy Williams and his Tar Heels. It?s not about the coaches, about the angry fans, about the past.
Tonight, it?s about the guys on the floor.
Get ready for the show.
There couldn?t be two teams that deserve a captive audience more than Memphis and Kansas. The Tigers, 38-1, and Jayhawks, 36-3, have been steamrolling toward this night since the beginning of the season. In late January, a meeting in April looked inevitable. Memphis was ranked No. 1, and KU No. 2. It?s no coincidence that the last two undefeated teams ? neither school had lost until KU fell to Kansas State on Jan. 30 ? are now the last ones standing.
Memphis senior Joey Dorsey remembers a night earlier this season when the Tigers gathered at coach John Calipari?s house. They turned on the tube and saw the future right in front of them.
?Kansas was playing,? Dorsey said. ?(Calipari) was like, ?They play just like us. They?re very long and athletic, and the style they play, they get up and down.? We always had it in our heads that we were going to play against Kansas.?
???
The talk of the day Sunday was the similarities between the two teams. No doubt, Calipari?s and Self?s programs have been built with NBA talent, and it starts with finding ways to recruit the nation?s top players to the middle of the country.
Some may think Self has it pretty easy. He can sell Kansas? tradition and history. He can sell those banners in Allen Fieldhouse and the fact that the program hasn?t missed out on an NCAA Tournament ? not including the year it was on probation in 1989 ? since 1983.
?There?s so much to sell,? Self said. ?First thing I?ll tell them, ?Do you know who Dr. Naismith is?? ?Of course, I do.? ?You know who the first coach at Kansas was?? ?No.? And you explain that.
?But Kansas is a great place because until you visit it, you can?t feel it. People that haven?t been there don?t get it because it is different.?
Still, if a kid from the East or West Coast doesn?t visit Lawrence, it?s hard to convince him to spend four years in the Heartland.
Calipari had it even tougher at Memphis. The program had traditionally recruited the city of Memphis and not much else. Calipari knew that wasn?t going to be enough.
?I just felt that if you want to be a national program,? Calipari said, ?you have to recruit nationally. I?ve always said I?d like to have a team of five to six Memphis kids, and then five to six kids from around the country. It?s gotten a little less than thatNext page >
Memphis guard Chris Douglas-Roberts (left) and Kansas guard Sherron Collins both attack the basket in their team?s offenses ? even though the Tigers and Jayhawks do it in different ways. KU uses lots of ball screens, and Memphis relies on its dribble-drive motion offense.
NCAA Men's Tournament bracket
KU fans confident about Jayhawks
KU poster page: Un-four-gettable
KU will try to finish for itself and for the Big 12
Year of the Jayhawk: KU has been school for all seasons
Former high school roommates Rush and Taggart meet on college basketball?s biggest stage
San Antonio Buzz: No rush decision for KU?s Rush
Nipping Rose will be KU senior Robinson?s job
Calipari not afraid to take a chance on kids
MEMPHIS TIGERS ROSTER AND STATISTICS
MEMPHIS TIGERS SCHEDULE
Tennessees Pearl says you have to make Memphis beat you from the perimeter
Calipari resurrects coaching career at Memphis
Get ready for alley-oop game between KU and Memphis
Memphis Douglas-Roberts getting plenty of ink for his play and on his skin
KANSAS JAYHAWKS SCHEDULE
NCAA Tournament final: Memphis vs. Kansas
KANSAS JAYHAWKS ROSTER STATISTICS
Former Kansas great Danny Manning selected for National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame
Kansas football and basketball history
The ghosts of '88 haunt KU
Calipari has had to be creative. He?s gotten six of his players from North Carolina prep schools. He used a relationship with William Wesley ? a well-known associate of many NBA players ? to lure Rose to campus for a visit.
?This stuff on recruiting is all about relationships,? Calipari said. ?I have a lot of relationships. That?s why I?ve been able to recruit pretty good players.?
Eventually, the teams started to shape up. Kansas began to round into its current form when Self landed a class of three McDonald?s All-Americans ? Chalmers, Micah Downs and Julian Wright ? and Brandon Rush. Self followed that up by luring a Chicago kid, Sherron Collins, and a Dallas kid, Darrell Arthur, to Lawrence.
Calipari convinced Douglas-Roberts to leave Detroit and come to Memphis, and Rose?s signing sealed the deal for this season. The Tigers were going to be a contender.
With all of this talent to play with, Self and Calipari both tweaked their offensive systems. It was time to let the boys play.
???
Douglas-Roberts seems to think that if he held a mirror up to his Memphis team, the Jayhawks may be staring back at him.
?There are a lot of similarities,? Douglas-Roberts said. ?Both teams like to dribble-drive, and both teams like to create off the dribble, and that?s very hard to guard. When you have people who can finish like Rush, Collins and Chalmers, it?s very hard. And I see why the coach tells them to play like that.?
Calipari?s Tigers play the dribble-drive motion offense that Calipari stumbled onto a few years back when a junior-college coach came to one of his practices.
Vance Walberg, a coach at Fresno (Calif.) City College at the time, was at dinner with Calipari when Calipari asked him what offense Walberg?s team ran.
?You don?t want to see it, because you won?t do it,? Walberg told him.
?No,? Calipari said, ?I want to see it.?
So Walberg showed him the offense. Calipari, a disciple of Larry Brown who could trace his roots all the way back to Dean Smith and Phog Allen, had always been a traditionalist on offense. But he loved the spacing of Walberg?s system. Calipari didn?t have the players yet to fit the system, but he?d work it in slowly until he had them.
?When I had a team full of these guys,? Calipari said, ?I said, ?You know what? I want to go fully with it.? I just think these guys feel unleashed. Every one of them knows that they have the ability to take the ball to the basket.?
The dribble-drive allows Memphis to spread the floor with four players on the perimeter. It forces the opposing team to keep Memphis? guards out of the lane, which has been just about impossible this season.
But the Tigers aren?t the only ones who have changed it up to match their talent. Self has been fine-tuning his offense, which used to be the high-low, to fit his current collection of players, too.
?We just kept tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, trying to find modes off of ball screens that, if they played us this way, this is how we would attack,? Self said. ?Sometimes, it looks good. Sometimes, it doesn?t. But I think we have a nice blend right now because the better athletes you get, you want them to be able to use their athletic ability to get in the paint. The hardest thing in my opinion is to guard the ball.?
???
Dorsey was asked whether Kansas-Memphis was going to look like an NBA game.
?A pickup game,? he said, smiling.
Yes, this will be a show. Memphis loves to run, and the Tigers are even fun to watch in the half court. Kansas proved against North Carolina that it can run with anybody, too. Both teams certainly have the horses.
?It?s hard stopping that,? Memphis guard Antonio Anderson said. ?We know we gotta get back, they know they gotta get back. It?s going to be a track meet.?
So how will KU defend the Tigers? Will the Jayhawks play the dreaded zone defense, or will they stick to man-to-man, their bread and butter?
It?s just one more subplot to watch for the millions of fans at home and the 44,000 at the Alamodome. Oh, and don?t forget Darnell Jackson.
?When (tonight) gets here,? Jackson said, ?and the lights are on, and the ball goes up in the air, there?s going to be two great teams fighting for a national championship. Guys are going to give all of their mind, their body and their soul to try and win this national championship and bring it back to their program.?
