NEW ORLEANS — Well, if you’re going to have a Final Four in a mystical city like New Orleans, why wouldn’t you invite a few ghosts along for the ride?
So if John Calipari is going go finally shake the thoroughly unwanted title of Best Coach to Never Win a Title from his shoulders, he’s going to have to do it by beating the coach and the school that helped fasten that millstone to his neck. Maybe that’s precisely the way it should be, and now Kansas will assume from Louisville the school that’s flashing house money in a game with Kentucky.
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Though a team with 32 victories — and Kansas’ stirring 64-62 win over Ohio State in the Final Four of the NCAA tournamenbt was the Jayhawks’ 32nd of the season — doesn’t exactly fit the profile for Cinderella.
“We’re a good team, and we deserve to be here,” Kansas coach Bill Self said after his team overcame a 34-25 halftime deficit by shooting 54 percent in the second half and limiting the Buckeyes to a grotesque 24 percent. “It’s pretty cool to have the winningest program of all time and the second-winningest program of all time hooking up.”
It has been a remarkable journey for Self, who was working Larry Brown’s camp at Kansas fresh off a career at Oklahoma State in the summer of 1985 when he blew out his knee playing in a counselor’s pick-up game.
Brown, feeling guilty, consoled him, and asked, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Self actually had an idea.
“Can you make me the graduate assistant?” he asked, and it turned out that Brown had an opening because his former GA had just taken a job at Pittsburgh.
His name was John Calipari.
So, yes: Calipari and Self know each other, they go back a quarter century, but more memorably go back to a Monday night in San Antonio five years ago when Self’s Jayhawks trailed Calipari’s Memphis Tigers by nine points with 2:11 to go in the national championship game. But Memphis stopped making free throws and Mario Chalmers drained a 3-pointer at the buzzer and the Jayhawks won in overtime.
There but for the grace of that one jump shot, it’s Self who carries the burden into tomorrow’s game, and he would do so with the lesser team Instead, he is 3-0 in Final Four games. He will be waiting for Calipari tomorrow night. That shouldn’t matter to the Wildcats, who have beaten back all challengers this year — including Kansas, back in November, back in New York, when the Wildcats won 75-65 at the Garden.
One more obstacle for Calipari, and it’s a familiar one. Unleash the ghosts and let’s go.