thoughts on the championship

First off, one of the main reasons why I like the first two weekends of the tournament is related to why I usually get disappointed by the Final Four--the same upsets that are so thrilling, end up with uninspiring teams in the Final Four. But this year, we had all chalk and I watched every second of the Final Four. Although the UCLA game wasn't close at the end, it was high-quality basketball. The UNC game was incredible to watch, and the Championship game surpassed all expectations.

A couple notes on last nights game:

Of course, the irony that all year the knock on Memphis was poor free throw shooting. And then Calipari kept saying it wasn't a weakness, and they proved him right in the tournament. And then in crunch time, they missed four free throws, taken by their best players. Any one of those should have sealed the deal.

CDR missing the front end of a 1 and 1, up 4, 1:15 to go.
CDR missing both free throws, up 2, :16 to go.
Rose missing the first one, up 2, :10 to go.

But of course that was obvious. What stood out to me, was that Bill Self did a fine job coaching, until the last ten minutes of the game. Up 3, he switched to a box and 1 defense guarding CDR. Memphis proceeded to go on a 10-0 run which would be the difference until the last two minutes. And then as he acknowledged after the game, he didn't deserve the credit for the Chalmers 3-pointer.

Sure, I would have liked for Bill Self to not win the championship at KU and then slink off to Oklahoma State and suck for a while, but I'm over it. I really can't argue with him moving to KU. Sure he could have won a championship in 05, especially with Villanueva. But he had an opportunity to go to a better program, he did, he won a championship with his own players and now he's going to get paid. It's not as if any of us Illini could say that we would pass up opportunities like that.

Oh and this shirt is really ugly: