Not surprisingly, Tigers lose title at the line
This is madness
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Throughout the entire season, the Memphis head coach chastised all those who dared to question his team's deplorable foul-shooting. He repeated over and over that he wasn't concerned about it, even when the Tigers were at one point dead last in the entire country in converting free throws.
He even came up with the mantra, "We make 'em when they count."
They did — for a while. Then it was the end of the line for Calipari and the Memphis Tigers.
And fittingly, it came at the free-throw line.
It was bound to happen. It was just a matter of when. Everyone knew it, even Calipari — although he'll likely never admit it.
The Memphis Tigers turned back into, well, the Memphis Tigers, and the team's top two shooters missed critical free throws that all but handed the championship to Kansas.
Chris Douglas-Roberts missed the front end of a one-and-one with 1:15 left, then missed two more with 16.8 seconds left. With 10.8 on the clock, Derrick Rose missed one of two to set up a colossal collapse.
Memphis led by nine with 2:12 left in the game.
The game was over.
"We were ready to cut the nets down," Memphis senior big man Joey Dorsey said.
Then the team that came into the game shooting a miserable 61 percent from the charity stripe did what they do from the line.
They missed 'em.
"We knew they were a bad free-throw shooting team," Kansas guard Mario Chalmers said.
Calipari told his team to foul Sherron Collins on the final play. However, Rose either didn't listen or didn't hear and Collins found Chalmers for a 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds left that sent the game into overtime — otherwise known as the morgue for the Tigers.
Five minutes later, the Kansas players stood on the podium listening to "One Shining Moment" after a 75-68 overtime victory.
Even Calipari, the master manipulator, wasn't able to spin this one after the game.
"They don't make every one," he said. "They're not machines. They're kids."
Memphis came out somewhat passive and the team that drove and kicked all season seemingly forgot about the "drive" part of Calipari's offense.
Or maybe it was that the most athletic team in the country had finally met its match. Rose was having difficulty getting by Russell Robinson and Collins, a fellow Chicago native.
The Tigers settled for perimeter shots — and weren't making them. Kansas went into the locker room with a five-point lead, but it was short-lived. The two teams battled back and forth until Calipari's team, led by the scoring prowess of Rose, appeared to take control after the freshman phenom converted a three-point play and followed it up with a circus shot from just inside the arc that gave Memphis a 56-49 lead with 4:09 left.
Robert Dozier pushed the lead to 60-51 a little more than two minutes later, and it appeared as though Memphis was in position to win its first-ever national title. It also looked as though Rose was going to lead his team to a championship in a one-and-done effort that would mimic that of Carmelo Anthony five years ago to the day.
Enter the free-throw shooting woes.
It was bound to happen.
"I can't explain why (I missed them)," Douglas-Roberts said. "I don't know."
Instead of a celebration after the game, Rose had tears streaming down his face as he hugged his brother, Reggie, and got some consolation from the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Rose certainly deserved a different fate than this after he and CDR helped orchestrate one of the most remarkable postseason runs in recent memory.
This is a Memphis club that won a Division I-record 38 games this season and tore apart Michigan State, Texas and UCLA to reach the national title game. It was a team that was so close to tears of joy instead of those of pain.
"They're hurting bad," Calipari said. "They know how close they were to a national title."
Fifteen feet.
That's the distance from the foul line to the backboard.
Calipari can say what he wants about the plays leading up to the missed foul shots, but this came down to charity — and Memphis didn't get any when it counted.
"I guess you can boil it down to free throws," Douglas-Roberts said.
Calipari's group had been knocking them down throughout the tournament. The Tigers shot more than 70 percent in the five games leading up to the national championship.
"In the back of our heads, we knew they couldn't make free throws," Collins said. "But we were still surprised because their best free-throw shooters missed them. It played right into our hands."
Calipari is right. There were other plays that contributed to the collapse — Antonio Anderson's ill-advised pass, Dorsey's fifth foul that had him on the sidelines watching down the stretch.
"I'm still kind of numb to what just happened," Calipari said.
I'm not sure why. He's seen it before.
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